CoinDesk's Money Reimagined: Recent Episodes
CoinDesk
Money is changing...so where do we go from here? Through high-profile interviews and thought-provoking analysis, join Michael Casey and Sheila Warren for the Money Reimagined Podcast, as they explore the connections between finance, human culture and our increasingly digital lives.
Following a court ruling, the SEC must review its denial of Grayscale Investments' attempt to convert GBTC into an ETF, possibly opening the door to the first U.S. spot bitcoin ETF.
In today's episode of "Money Reimagined," Sheila Warren takes the stage solo, delving into the day's updates on the court ruling. She seamlessly transitions into an insightful conversation about the FX market alongside Alex McDougall, CEO of Stablecorp. Stabecorp is a Canadian-based company that has created the Canadian dollar-backed stablecoin QCAD.
Disclaimer: Grayscale and CoinDesk share the same parent company, Digital Currency Group (DCG).Links mentioned in the show.
Links mentioned in the show :
Court Rules SEC Must Review Rejection of Grayscale's Bitcoin ETF Bid, Bitcoin Jumps 5%
Bitcoin Jumps 5% on Grayscale Ruling, While Crypto-Related Stocks Soar More Than 10%
The Seven Defining Opportunities in “On-Chain” FX
Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “The News Tonight ” by Shimmer.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Ever find yourself in the seamless clutches of Google's ecosystem? It's like being swept into a digital whirlpool with no exit strategy. And guess what, this is more than just about one company—it's a symphony of significant players orchestrating our digital dependencies.
In another intriguing episode of "Money Reimagined," our ever-curious host, Sheila Warren , takes center stage as she embarks on arant, alongside co-host Michael Casey, with a passionate reflection on her morning skirmish with Google and its pervasive grasp of digital feudalism. Get ready, as she delves into how the snares of convenience shackle us all in an intricate web of modern existence.
Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “The News Tonight ” by Shimmer.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
At the beginning of the internet, there was no way to share data. Decentralized storage was not possible. Now there are multiple ways to store data in a ‘Shared’ state.
With AI algorithms now consuming vast amounts of personal and intellectual data, the prospect of the exploitation of that data is daunting.
In this short unique episode of "Money Reimagined," Michael Casey is joined by Football Club owner and Philanthropist Frank McCourt. He is also the founder of Project Liberty, an urgent initiative to repair the web.
Currently, Casey and McCourt collaborate on a joint book endeavor, with Frank elaborating on his insights during a casual lunch conversation. He delves into the Internet's transformation into a data economy, the value of personal information, and the impact of Artificial Intelligence algorithms and machine learning on the realm of intellectual property and copyright ownership.
Join us as we envision a more equitable digital landscape through decentralized storage, personal data security, and AI synergy.
Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “The News Tonight ” by Shimmer.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” Michael Casey and Sheila Warren riff with each other on the latest fascinating topics in the crypto news cycle: the Federal Reserve's FEDNOW project, crypto regulation, the monopoly of the dollar, stablecoin legislation, MiCA, Elon Musk and much more.
Links:
Fed Dramatically Speeds Up U.S. Payments With FedNow, but Downplays Any Tie to CBDCs
Don’t Pop the Champagne on U.S. Crypto Bills – Progress in Congress Has Been Costly
Stablecoin Issuers Urged to Anticipate MiCA Rules by EU Banking Agency
Is It Finally Time to ‘X-it’ Twitter for Threads?
Twitter Is Dead. Long Live Crypto Twitter?
Summary List
Federal Reserve, the FED NOW project for faster payments. | Bipartisan consensus on crypto. 1:05 | The monopoly of the dollar. 3:16 | The form factor of programmable money. 6:38 | Issues with stablecoin legislation. 8:09 | The power dynamic between the agencies. 12:43 | Positive takeaways from the legislation. 18:56 | What happens to crypto Twitter now? 23:09 | The battle over threads. 25:07
Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “AITA” by Neon Beach.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” Michael Casey and Sheila Warren kick off the show by talking about WorldCoin, which has dominated the news cycle in the crypto space for the last 24 hours. They discuss digital identity as a project, biometrics as an abuse of human rights, and why people are emotional about it.
Casey and Warren shift to chat with guest AdrianHale the Director of Economic & Community Development at Foundry about what is really going on with education and emergent jobs in Bitcoin Mining concerning lower-income communities.
Disclaimer: DCG (Digital Currency Group) is the owner of both Foundry and CoinDesk.
Other Links:
foundrydigital.com
Foundry Deploy
Stories:
Worldcoin Token Slumps Amid Crypto Community Unease
UK Information Commission to Make Inquiries About Worldcoin
Worldcoin Releases Tokenomics, Report Geofenced for Some Countries
Elon Musk’s Twitter Overhaul Could Be Huge for DOGE and Crypto Generally
Dogecoin Bumps 10% on X Payments Speculation, DOGE Futures Traders Lose $10M
Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “AITA” by Neon Beach.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” Michael Caseytakes listeners on an insightful journey into the world of finance and technology featuring two intriguing interviews conducted on the sidelines of ‘Uncharted’ a Summit held on June 24, 202, at the residence of media entrepreneur Michael Lowe in Southampton. The first interview is with Sallie Krawcheck, the former head of Bank of America's global wealth and Investment Management Division, and the founder of EllaVest, a groundbreaking digital finance advisory firm tailored for women. With her vast experience in Wall Street, Krawcheck shares her perspective on cryptocurrency and whether EllaVest includes it in their investment strategies.
The second interview brings forward Nick Mayer, the founder of Provocative Science, who unveils a fascinating approach to the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining. Rather than viewing it solely as a drain on energy resources, Mayer's team has discovered a unique way to harness the wind output from ASIC miners to drive carbon capture solutions. This innovative dual-purpose proposition aligns with the common notion that Bitcoin mining can support renewable energy development. However, it goes a step further by addressing carbon reduction simultaneously. Mayer sheds light on the principle behind this idea and explains how his provocative science project leverages Bitcoin mining to tackle two critical challenges at once.
This episode will leave you with a sense of excitement and hope for the future of finance at the intersection of technology and environmental consciousness.
Story Links:
Uncharted
https://sites.google.com/loeb.nyc/uncharted
Summary List:
Money reimagined with Michael Casey and Sallie Krawcheck. What is the investment case for crypto? 2:43 | The representation of women in the crypto industry. 5:04 | The resistance to diversity in crypto. 7:02 | How to break down myths about diversity? 8:49 | Sally’s background. 10:43 | Nick Mayer and solving the climate crisis while using Bitcoin. | How does carbon capture become profitable?13:02 | The dual purpose idea of Bitcoin.16:13 | Using Bitcoin as a force for good.
Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “AITA” by Neon Beach.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
As one of the world's largest asset management firms, BlackRock has shown a keen interest in the digital currency space.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” Michael Casey and Sheila Warren chat with Noelle Acheson, former Head of Research at CoinDesk, also Head of Marketing at Genesis, and now Author of the must-read newsletter ‘Crypto is Macro Now’; to delve further into why BlackRock is interested in Bitcoin and how its institutionalization is shaping the market. They further discuss the implications of BlackRock's involvement and its goals for the future.
In addition, Casey, Warren, and Acheson examine the positive spin on crypto regulation in Europe and how it has taken years to get to this point. With the European Union's proposed regulatory measures and the role of the state in driving innovation, they analyze the potential impact on the value of Bitcoin and the future of privacy services.
Clip: BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Says Bitcoin Is a Hedge Against the Devaluation of Your Currency
Story Links:
Larry Fink Doesn't Get It, Macro Drama, BTC Dominance
Crypto is Macro Now
BlackRock CEO’s Turnabout on Bitcoin Elicits Cheers, Skepticism of Crypto Cred
Will BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF Take the Spirit Out of the Honey Badger?
Summary List:
The Institutionalization of Crypto. 0:00 | Blackrock Ceo’s thoughts on Bitcoin. 1:53 | Does it really matter?5:03 | What’s the goal here for BlackRock? 9:50 | The role of Institutions in the Market. 15:11 | Challenges for traditional financial institutions to engage with Bitcoin. | The positive take on regulation in Europe. 21:24 | How long did it take to get these laws passed? 24:15 | What is the value of Bitcoin? 28:22 | The role of the state in driving innovation. 32:06 | The perfect reason why a universal wallet is important. 35:34
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Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “AITA” by Neon Beach.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” Michael Casey and Sheila Warren engage in a captivating conversation with Brady Dale, a reporter from Axios and the author of the book "SBF: How the FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto's Very Bad Good Guy."
Brady shares his insights into the fascinating story behind the FTX bankruptcy and its impact on the world of cryptocurrency. The discussion delves into the political philosophy of crypto, taking stock of the current crypto landscape, and the motivations behind Brady's decision to write a first-person account of the crypto industry. Join them as they navigate through the complexities of crypto, exploring its triumphs, controversies, and the powerful characters that shape its future.
Topic Links and Stories:
Axios.com/authors/bdale
SBF: How the FTX BankruptcyUnwound Crypto’s VeryBad Good Guy
Thanks Sam! How FTX Led to World’s Worst Crypto Policy
5 Lessons From 2022 That Changed Crypto Forever
Summary List:
- 0:00 Introducing brady dale, former co-writer at Axios crypto newsletter. | How fx bankruptcy unwound crypto. | The Political philosophy of crypto. 1:17 | Why did Brady Dale decide to write a book about cryptocurrency? 3:36 | The three most important cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin. | Dogecoin’s original NFT and how it evolved. 8:44 | How did you first meet Sam? 13:17 | The calculus of what to do right. 20:05 | The EA movement and Sam. 23:40 | Disdain of institutions and disruption. 28:06 | Greatness and the rise of DeFi. 29:15 | A period of silence on social media. 32:58 | We are tribal creatures and tribes need leaders. 36:32 | Don’t Trust Verify. 38:18 | The inevitability of crypto’s future. 43:00
Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “AITA” by Neon Beach.
From our Sponsor:
EY blockchain solutions can transform the business lifecycle for digital ecosystems, by promoting trust, transparency, privacy and efficiency. EY: Helping you build a better working world. Find out more at blockchain.ey.com
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” Michael Casey comes to us from theUncharted Summit, at Michael Loeb’s expansive house in the Hamptons, and speaks with Mike Novogratz, the CEO and founder of Galaxy Digital about property rights, ETF’s and Galaxy’s partnership with Invesco.
From Site:
About Uncharted - is a community of some of the world's most preeminent founders and funders to facilitate conversations, promote the exchange of ideas, introduce people to new friends, and re-introduce old ones to build a supportive network for collaboration and cooperation.
Uncharted Summit - Our flagship event offers a truly one-of-a-kind summit of the world’s best entrepreneurs and investors. This is an all-day event galvanized by remarkable panels and panelists trying to Chart the Unchartable.
Topic Links and Stories:
Uncharted
Will BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF Take the Spirit Out of the Honey Badger?
Circle’s Allaire Says Bitcoin ETFs Likely to Be Approved: Bloomberg
Summary List:
- From the Uncharted Summit. 0:00 The importance of private property. 0:55 The democratization of the digital economy. 3:03 The new generation of glass. 4:59 Blockchain tickets and how they work. 6:57 How do we get to a policy framework for adoption? 8:54 Decentralization vs centralized crypto projects. 10:44 Is there a regulated security for ETFs? 12:40
Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “AITA” by Neon Beach.
From our Sponsor:
EY blockchain solutions can transform the business lifecycle for digital ecosystems, by promoting trust, transparency, privacy and efficiency. EY: Helping you build a better working world. Find out more at blockchain.ey.com
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” Michael Casey and Sheila Warren speak with the Head of Research at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Hyun Song Shin, about the recent release of the Annual Economic Report; discussing the tokenization of deposits and the creation of a unified ledger in which tokenized assets, deposits, and CBDCs could interact in the same platform. Casey, Warren, and Shin take a closer look at the challenges central banks are currently facing and dive into the immobilizing or locking of real-world assets and the legal impediments to tokenization.
Topic Links:
Bank for International Settlements
Annual Economic Report 2023
Summary List:
Introduction to the BIS Economic Report Chapter 3. 1:35 The power of digital currencies and central banks. 4:39 How to harness the power of tokenization. 7:47 The wholesale vs. retail CBDC debate. 12:22 The singleness of money and stablecoins. 15:00 The central bank is the most trustworthy actor. 19:01 Singleness of money and interoperability. 20:23 Importance of preserving the value of money. 22:45 Support from central banks around the world. 26:13
Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “AITA” by Neon Beach.
From our Sponsor:
EY blockchain solutions can transform the business lifecycle for digital ecosystems, by promoting trust, transparency, privacy and efficiency. EY: Helping you build a better working world. Find out more at blockchain.ey.com
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” Michael Casey and Sheila Warren first discuss recent regulation stories that seem to dominate the news everywhere concerning the SEC and its most recent lawsuits against crypto exchanges and the Ripple/Hinman documents. Warren and Casey then examine the newfound role of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) in the Digital Economy as well as who controls monetization in the digital space.
Topic Links:
The SEC Has Started an All-In Political Battle Over Crypto
Why William Hinman’s Emails Matter to the XRP Army and the Crypto’s Price
Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar Launch Web3 Tequila Loyalty Program
Snoop Dogg Drops New NFTs That Evolve With His Tour
FEWOCiOUS and Adidas Team Up on Digital and Physical NFT Sneakers
Summary List:
News of the Week. 0:00 Understanding the complexity of the digital media space. 4:11 Snoop Dogg NFT. 8:11 Where the “F” is the money? 9:28 Nft’s role in the digital economy. 12:29 Regulation of tokenization. 17:55 How social media is connecting us. 22:26 The relationship between the artist and the fan. 26:19 Who gets to decide what’s culturally relevant? 30:05
From our Sponsor:
EY blockchain solutions can transform the business lifecycle for digital ecosystems, by promoting trust, transparency, privacy and efficiency. EY: Helping you build a better working world. Find out more at blockchain.ey.com
Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “AITA” by Neon Beach.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
The process of rule-making to determine a ‘Security’ is an unsettled issue that may need to be resolved in court. And separately, why the rise of AI, requires effective governance.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” Michael Casey and Sheila Warren first, examine the latest regulatory news concerning the SEC's suit against both Binance and Coinbase, as well as the implications for the crypto industry and all government agencies. They are then joined by Kurt Hemecker; COO of the Mina Foundation, the public benefit corporation serving the Mina Protocol, to discuss a different area of regulation; artificial intelligence governance.
Topic Links:
SEC Sues Crypto Exchange Binance, CEO Changpeng Zhao Over Multiple Securities Violation Allegations
SEC Sues Coinbase on Unregistered Securities Exchange Allegations
U.S. Doesn't 'Need More Digital Currency' Because It Has the Dollar, Says SEC's Gensler
What AI Governance Can Learn From Crypto’s Decentralization Ethos
Summary List:
The timing of the lawsuits is interesting.
Implications for the industry and all agencies.
The suit against Coinbase is different from other cases.
What’s next for Coinbase?
Comprehensive complaint against Binance.
How the industry is reacting to this complaint.
Binance and the asset freeze.
Introduction to Mina Foundation and the MINA protocol.
Mina, a layer one blockchain using zero-knowledge technology.
Programmability layer.
The definition of zero-knowledge proof.
Zero-knowledge proof and AI.
The rise of AI and the importance of governance.
Ethics and bias in voting- AI.
How to stop governance from being taken over by actors.
How zero knowledge can help with the voting process.
Transparency is what matters.
The black box in AI.
How web three can work in conjunction with the concept of decentralization.
Transparency is not everything you need.
Are we seeing a deep fake on Twitter?
The need for a centralized or decentralized verification system.
Proving humaneness on the blockchain.
Do we trust tech more than people?
How the crypto industry is being perceived by some.
The arc of history will show where things are landing.
Regulation and compliance need to meet.
Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “AITA” by Neon Beach.
From our Sponsor:
EY blockchain solutions can transform the business lifecycle for digital ecosystems, by promoting trust, transparency, privacy and efficiency. EY: Helping you build a better working world. Find out more at blockchain.ey.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Roofstock onChain
The crypto world has been a little different every week after the fallout with FTX and the image of Sam Bankman-Fried versus the reality of what was actually happening has created distrust in the crypto industry. So where do we begin to ask the right questions to balance the need for security with privacy for the future?
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren speak with Juan Zarate, senior adviser for Transnational Threats Project and Human Rights Initiative at CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies; to discuss how crypto companies can better prepare themselves for financial risks and what is a “rogue state.”
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer, Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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Roofstock onChain allows you to instantly transfer ownership of real-world homes using standard NFT smart contracts. Buy and sell homes with one-click, pay with crypto, and access DeFi lending options. Find our web3 homes at onchain.roofstock.com or your favorite NFT marketplace.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Roofstock onChain
This is a story of how something can appear to be what it is not.
It’s a tale of a jarring contrast between the image the world had of Sam Bankman-Fried before FTX’s meltdown pushed the crypto world into a nauseating tailspin and the reality of a wildly mismanaged multibillion-dollar empire with what Bankman-Fried’s appointed successor described as an “unprecedented” failure of accounting, oversight and discipline.
Before Ian Allison’s Nov. 2 CoinDesk scoop on FTX sister company Alameda Research’s suspect balance sheet, Bankman-Fried was seen as a philanthropic, well-connected, celebrity-hobnobbing, marketing-savvy leader, a wunderkind who made crypto respectable. Two weeks later, he is viewed as a laughing stock, a suspected criminal, an irresponsible, wildly underqualified, selfish child who has destroyed the livelihoods of tens of thousands. Wow. What a difference two weeks make!
In this episode of Money Reimagined, host Michael Casey chats with two CoinDesk colleagues who’ve delved deeply into the SBF story: Deputy Managing Editor for Companies coverage Tracy Wang and Managing Editor for Global Policy and Regulation, Nikhilesh De. Together they dig into how the erstwhile FTX CEO could have misled the world to such a degree.
They explore Bankman-Fried’s journey, how it begins with his adherence to the principles of effective altruism, a stated desire to get as rich as possible to do maximum good, and how it all seems to fall apart as FTX gets bigger. They discuss how his philanthropy, political donations, and marketing efforts hid the dark reality underneath and delve into what needs to happen, at the community level and in regulation, to protect people falling from such distortions in the future.
See also: Divisions in Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Blur on His Trading Titan Alameda’s Balance Sheet
Sam Bankman-Fried's Frequent Commenting Draws Icy Response From FTX's Restructuring Chief
FTX Employees Worldwide Learned of Bankruptcy Along With the Public
The FTX Collapse Looks an Awful Lot Like Enron
The Long Arm of FTX
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer, Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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Roofstock onChain allows you to instantly transfer ownership of real-world homes using standard NFT smart contracts. Buy and sell homes with one-click, pay with crypto, and access DeFi lending options. Find our web3 homes at onchain.roofstock.com or your favorite NFT marketplace.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Roofstock onChain
Relm Insurance CEO Joe Ziolkowski spoke with us a few episodes ago about the growing demand for off-chain, crypto-specific insurance and the likelihood of non-crypto insurance products offered on-chain.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren speak with Denis Pitcher, chief fintech adviser to the Office of the Premier in the territory, and Chancellor Barnett, chairman of Jewell Bank, the first recipient of Bermuda’s digital asset banking license; to discuss the other side of Bermuda’s crypto infrastructure as an authority in “firsts” when it comes to the private sector.
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer, Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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Roofstock onChain allows you to instantly transfer ownership of real-world homes using standard NFT smart contracts. Buy and sell homes with one-click, pay with crypto, and access DeFi lending options. Find our web3 homes at onchain.roofstock.com or your favorite NFT marketplace.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Near.
Legislative steps we're taught in civics class are only a small part of what it takes for a bill to become a law. The process of strategy negotiations and long-term thinking for future industries is complex. In addition to balancing huge agendas, lawmakers and their teams have to navigate a complex regulatory environment, all while paying attention to polling data. According to a recent study by the Crypto Council for Innovation, those who own crypto will vote for candidates who support crypto.
"Money Reimagined" hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren speak with Alex Sternhell, founder of Sternhell Group, and Brett Quick, head of government affairs for North America at the Crypto Council, to discuss the importance of crypto in this legislative season and the upcoming midterm elections.
See also: A Quarter of Americans Say Inflation, Economy Woes Sparking Interest in Crypto, Poll Finds
A Majority of US Voters Want More Crypto Regulation, Poll Shows
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer, Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Near.
The Bermuda government has taken an interesting approach to encourage the development of crypto, blockchain, and digital assets within the territory.
The insurance sector is one area where Bermuda seems well-positioned to dominate crypto finance and its territory is one of the largest insurance and reinsurance hubs in the world.
Does its model set the stage for other countries in the quest for viable insurance?
On this episode of “Money Reimagined” host Michael Casey is at the Bermuda Tech Summit in Bermuda and is joined by his co-host Sheila Warren to speak with Joseph Ziolkowski the CEO of Relm. Relm describes itself as the leading global insurer for companies operating in new and emerging business sectors, such as digital asset/web3, cannabis, and alternative therapeutics.
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Near.
Now in the bear market, we are approaching the potential for a secure, privacy-preserving Web3.
Why is it so important or even possible to have a truly portable identity now more than ever?
On this episode of “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren speak with Greg Kidd, a serial entrepreneur, investor, and the founder of the Hard Yaka investment group. As an early investor in companies such as Twitter, Square, Ripple, Coinbase, and Twilio, Gregg also started a digital identity company called GlobaliD.
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle and Near.
Over the past year, Michael and Sheila have talked quite a bit on this show about the quickly evolving crypto policy environment. A big theme in all of that has been the intersection – and quite often the clash – between the industry’s breakneck pace of innovation and regulation. As the industry grows, governments around the world are looking to get up to speed, and increasingly their actions have ramifications in the sector.
One regulatory body that’s increasingly engaging with the crypto community is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The CFTC is an independent U.S. agency that regulates the $200+ Trillion derivatives market including futures contracts, options, and swaps.
Since 1974 its mission has been to promote the integrity, resilience, and vibrancy of the U.S. derivatives markets through sound regulation. Now, based on the proposals of some legislative initiatives, it could be poised to take a leading role in the regulation of cryptocurrencies and digital assets in the U.S. – something many in the community are supporting, perhaps in the hope that it will reduce the sway of the seemingly less-friendly Securities and Exchange Commission.
To help us understand what all this means, hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren speak with former CFTC commissioner Dawn Stump on this 100th episode of “Money Reimagined.”
Dawn Stump became a commissioner in 2017 following a presidential appointment and Senate confirmation.
As one of five CFTC commissioners, she helped to shape the priorities of the agency while overseeing policy direction and internal planning. In particular, she was instrumental in negotiating the reform of derivatives regulations contained in the Dodd-Frank Act and in efforts to conduct oversight of commodity and financial derivatives under the jurisdiction of the CFTC.
This is a must-listen to better understand the crypto policy environment. As Dawn put it, “The impetus for regulation should not be a crisis; the impetus for regulation should be an opportunity.”
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle and Near.
Can financial inclusion be achieved without a bank account or a digital money solution, such as crypto?
Host Michael Caseyis solo on this episode of “Money Reimagined,” to speak with Brett Scott, journalist, financial hacker, activist, and author of ‘Cloud Money: Cash, Cards, Crypto and the War for Our Wallets.’
According to Scott’s thesis, digitizing money is putting humanity at risk. He argues that cash, with its unique capacity to preserve privacy and avoid central surveillance, is an important escape valve for societies to sustain their freedom. And while those concerns align with the views of many in the crypto community, Scott is not a big fan.
However, if crypto is to evolve, his perspective is an important one for people to absorb.
This is a must-listen episode.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle and Near.
By what means do we think about identity? A substantial amount of regulation and policy work that is happening in crypto right now, is about how and when one will need to classify a transaction or exchange and to what extent do pre-existing rules apply in the Web3 space.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are together again but this time, at Converge22 by Circle. They discuss the challenges of identity and verification in the U.S. and in other countries with Daniel Buchner, Head of Decentralized Identity at Block; and Chi Nnadi, the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Mara.
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle and Near.
A Part 2 climate change edition from Lisbon, Portugal at Nearcon2022.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are still together at Nearcon2022 for a second discussion on carbon credits and climate change.
They speak with guests Robert Schmidt, chief operating officer and co-founder of Toucan, and Phil Fogel, chief blockchain officer and co-founder of FlowCarbon.
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Money Reimagined listeners get a special discount on Converge22, Circle’s first annual conference on the blockchain-driven future of money. Coming this September, Converge22 is for change makers looking to build what’s next in Web3. Use the code “CoinDesk” at checkout https://hubs.li/Q01hpy4w0.
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
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I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries at the Investing in Digital Assets and Enterprises Summit. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle and Near.
A climate change edition from Lisbon Portugal at Nearcon2022.
“Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are together again at Nearcon2022 to discuss blockchain sustainability and the data needed to combat the concerns of climate change. This topic is “near and dear to their hearts” because Michael and Sheila co-founded CISA, the Crypto Impact Sustainability Accelerator, at The World Economic Forum precisely to focus on topics such as this and the use cases for crypto and blockchain.
On this episode they speak with guests Marc Johnson, an environmental solutions architect for Protocol Labs, and Fred Fournier, CEO of Open Forest Protocol.
Money Reimagined listeners get a special discount on Converge22, Circle’s first annual conference on the blockchain-driven future of money. Coming this September, Converge22 is for change makers looking to build what’s next in Web3. Use the code “CoinDesk” at checkout https://hubs.li/Q01hpy4w0.
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
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I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries at the Investing in Digital Assets and Enterprises Summit. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle and NEAR.
Think tanks are research institutions with an evidence-based approach. They have recently been called upon to provide data points for crypto to support informed policy decision-making.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren speak with
Josh Lipsky, the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, where he manages the Atlantic Council's CBDC's tracker project, and John Soroushian the senior associate director for technology at the Bipartisan Policy Center, to discuss the big focus areas for crypto research agendas over the next year and predictions for the upcoming congressional session.
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Money Reimagined listeners get a special discount on Converge22, Circle’s first annual conference on the blockchain-driven future of money. Coming this September, Converge22 is for change makers looking to build what’s next in Web3. Use the code “CoinDesk” at checkout https://hubs.li/Q01hpy4w0.
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
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I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries at the Investing in Digital Assets and Enterprises Summit. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle and NEAR.
In the attempt to contain the inflationary outbreak in the U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening by hiking interest rates will continue for some time. Recently, the U.S. central bank’s chair, Jerome Powell, made it clear that our present crypto winter was here to stay.
However, this is a good time for development in the crypto space.
On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren speak with Near Foundation’s CEO, Marieke Flament.
The Near Foundation is committed to expanding its ecosystem of developers and project leads working on top of the Near blockchain. Its proof-of-stake blockchain has introduced a number of the scaling solutions that Ethereum developers have been working on for years. And there is great encouragement around decentralized finance (DeFi) development.
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Money Reimagined listeners get a special discount on Converge22, Circle’s first annual conference on the blockchain-driven future of money. Coming this September, Converge22 is for change makers looking to build what’s next in Web3. Use the code “CoinDesk” at checkout https://hubs.li/Q01hpy4w0.
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries at the Investing in Digital Assets and Enterprises Summit. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. The theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle and NEAR.
The massive web of regulations that entangle the legacy financial sector have been, in the recent past, a guidepost for governors to apply to the crypto industry. But the argument for many in the crypto community is that those same rules aren’t really applicable to crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi), especially without considerable changes.
As the industry matures and seeks more clarity concerning governance and regulation, larger questions arise for the future of crypto commerce. How do we appropriately assess risk in new systems? Should regulators impose stricter constraints on crypto’s centralized finance sector?
Who has regulatory authority over which assets and why?
Today on “Money Reimagined,” host Sheila Warren examines alternative frameworks for regulation and world banking with Jai Massari, co-founder and chief legal officer of Lightspark; and Alexandra Barrage, partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, who also previously worked at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
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Money Reimagined listeners get a special discount on Converge22, Circle’s first annual conference on the blockchain-driven future of money. Coming this September, Converge22 is for change makers looking to build what’s next in Web3. Use the code “CoinDesk” at checkout https://hubs.li/Q01hpy4w0.
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
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I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries at the Investing in Digital Assets and Enterprises Summit. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. The theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle and NEAR.
For many in the crypto community the practice of pseudonymity for security and privacy is common and has purpose in working toward self-sovereignty. But is there a downside of pseudonymity? In our society especially, we are all too often familiar and perhaps too comfortable with sharing our identity or at least some form of it with others and sometimes the world. Does that make it hard for us to interact with those around us who choose to remain anonymous or create an identity that allows them to be protected… to be pseudonymous?
For an interesting analysis of how pseudonymity affects how we interact with people, “Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren speak with guest Punk 6529. The identity and voice of the person behind this pseudonym will not be disclosed, and therefore, both the video and audio have been modulated.
See also: Who You Really Are: A Conversation About Pseudonymity With Default Friend at Consensus
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Money Reimagined listeners get a special discount on Converge22, Circle’s first annual conference on the blockchain-driven future of money. Coming this September, Converge22 is for change makers looking to build what’s next in Web3. Use the code “CoinDesk” at checkout https://hubs.li/Q01hpy4w0.
_
NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
_
I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries at the Investing in Digital Assets and Enterprises Summit. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. The theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle and NEAR.
Until this year’s massive correction in token prices with the related collapse of Terra, Celsius Network and other once-big players, industry leaders could argue that a lightweight touch to regulation would allow innovation in this booming sector to flourish, however the extent of the losses has swung the balance in favor of regulators.
Recently, concerns have been raised with Tornado Cash, a decentralized software that mixes ether (ETH) payments to hide users’ tracks. The usage of this Ethereum-based smart contract has been banned for all US citizens and companies since it was added to the U.S. OFAC SDN list due to North Korean hackers using the program.
On today’s episode of “Money Reimagined,” discussing crypto regulation with host Michael Casey, is Tonya Evans, professor at Penn State Dickinson Law, a published author and influential crypto adviser with expertise in blockchain and crypto asset law, information privacy, administrative law and social justice.
Overcompensation happens in finance and there’s a good chance it will happen with crypto.
See also: Time for Crypto to Make Nice With Regulators
Crypto-Mixing Service Tornado Cash Blacklisted by US Treasury
What Happens When You Try to Sanction a Protocol Like Tornado Cash
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Money Reimagined listeners get a special discount on Converge22, Circle’s first annual conference on the blockchain-driven future of money. Coming this September, Converge22 is for change makers looking to build what’s next in Web3. Use the code “CoinDesk” at checkout https://hubs.li/Q01hpy4w0.
_
NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
_
I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk is the place to see your idea for the next big thing through – meet with leading investors, vet service providers and meet fellow visionaries at the Investing in Digital Assets and Enterprises Summit. Learn more and apply to become a presenter today: coindesk.com/ideas
_
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. The theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle and NEAR.
What is it with sports and crypto? Crypto does reward and incentivize actions that reinforce a sense of belonging to a community that sporting institutions, athletes and fans all know well. But with this crypto winter, will fans be left with something of lasting value that enhances their engagement with their favorite teams and athletes – or are they merely being exploited for money?
On today’s episode of “Money Reimagined,” to dive deeper into this topic with hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are CoinDesk contributing writer Jeff Wilser and Sean O’Brien, from BuyTheBroncos DAO, which was launched to set up a fund to acquire the storied Denver football team.
See also:
For the Fans: How DAOs Could Change Sports
How Is Being in Crypto Like Playing a Sport?
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Money Reimagined listeners get a special discount on Converge22, Circle’s first annual conference on the blockchain-driven future of money. Coming this September, Converge22 is for change makers looking to build what’s next in Web3. Use the code “CoinDesk” at checkout https://hubs.li/Q01hpy4w0.
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NEAR is a simple, revolutionary Web3 platform for decentralized apps, created by developers for developers. More than 700 projects are now building on NEAR’s fast, secure and infinitely scalable protocol, from DeFi apps to play-and-earn games, NFT marketplaces and more. Start your developer journey now by visiting NEAR at near.org.
-
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. The theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Circle.
Can decentralized organizations help lower the costs of medications and accelerate medical research?
On today’s episode of “Money Reimagined,” host Michael Casey sits down with Genetic Networks Founder & Chairman Gennaro D'Urso to talk about his efforts to change the inefficiencies of Big Pharma by using a revolutionary DAO-like model to help fund drug discoveries and possibly cure future diseases.
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Money Reimagined listeners get a special discount on Converge22, Circle’s first annual conference on the blockchain-driven future of money. Coming this September, Converge22 is for change makers looking to build what’s next in Web3. Use the code “CoinDesk” at checkout https://hubs.li/Q01hpy4w0.
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This episode was produced by Nicole Link, edited by Michele Musso and announced by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This crypto fallout didn’t just randomly happen. The vulnerabilities in crypto protocols for users and the protocols themselves have presented many threats. Where do we go from here? Is there a balance between security/regulation and a decentralized approach?
On today’s episode of “Money Reimagined,” to dive deeper into this topic with hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren is Mitchell Amador, CEO and founder of Web3 security services platform Immunefi, and Timothy Massad, a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Amador breaks down Immunefi’s recent second quarter report that displays the volume of crypto funds lost by the community due to hacks and scams.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
As the industry matures, how we’re communicating about the technology and who we’re communicating with is more important than ever. As more new models to help others to understand and use blockchain technology are arising around the world more and more, how do we help the less fortunate communities that this new technology is designed to serve, build and grow?
On today’s episode of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren explore this important topic with two guests who have innovative approaches to education in Africa and the Americas. To delve deeper into technology education is
Oluwaseun David Adepoju, head of research at the Africa Blockchain Institute and editor of the Africa Blockchain Report; and Rhonda Eldridge, founder of Harness All Possibilities (USA) and Harness All Possibilities (Bahamas).
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
At a Consensus panel from Austin, Texas, "Money Reimagined" host Michael Casey starts off the introductions of an engaging conversation with Marc Hochstein, Executive Editor at Coindesk; and Edward Snowden, a former CIA officer, and National Security Agency (NSA) consultant who is now the author of the new memoir, Permanent Record. Hochstein and Snowden discuss the importance of securing internet privacy.
This episode was edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
A Consensus 2022 panel from Austin, Texas, "Money Reimagined" host Michael Casey starts off the introductions of an important discussion with Emily Parker, CoinDesk's executive director of global content; the Honorable J. Christopher Giancarlo, dubbed “CryptoDad,” served as 13th Chairman of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission; and Neha Narula is the Director of the Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, to discuss the social and geo-political implications of the rise of international competition between central bank digital currencies, stablecoins and native crypto currencies.
This episode was edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
At a Consensus panel from Austin, Texas, "Money Reimagined" host Sheila Warren sits down with Natalya Thakur, co-founder and chief operating officer of Knox Networks; Diana Biggs, chief strategy officer of Valour; and Patrick Murck, president and chief legal officer of Transparent, to discuss the pros and cons of corporate control of digital money. The panel examines the meaning of “open money.” What does it mean to our society? What is closed now, and what do we recognize as being open? How we think about corporate influence and the challenges that will arise affects our ability to be inclusive of those often excluded from legacy systems and to be mindful of our imprint on our planet.
This episode was edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
On today’s episode of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren explore some recent work by the Bretton Woods Committee, a body that was founded in 1983 to help improve the effectiveness of international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The latest brief from the Bretton Woods Committee highlights the potential blockchain technologies have in boosting privacy, lowering costs associated with international payments and remittances and advancing financial inclusion.
The hosts are joined by one of the brief’s authors, Deepika Sharma, who is a director of research within the multi assets, strategies and solutions group at BlackRock; and by William Dudley, the chairman of the committee's board of directors and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl and Nia Freeman. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
Live from Consensus in Austin, Texas, "Money Reimagined" hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren sit down with Kimbal Musk, co-founder and executive chairman of Big Green, and H.E.R. DAO Founder, Tracey Bowen to discuss their ESG projects and how DAOs are advancing them.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
In the Web 2 era of the internet, online abuse, loss of autonomy over personal data and the proliferation of disinformation are rampant.
Frank McCourt, billionaire and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, believes blockchain has the power to solve many of our Web 2 problems by strengthening individual autonomy and harmonizing online communities into one cohesive whole, free from abuse or misinformation. But he's not alone! This idea may seem like a long shot at first glance, given how quickly technology changes nowadays. However, there are those who believe in what McCourt is trying to do with his company-, and everyone is paying attention.
McCourt, now CEO of Unfinished, joins “Money Reimagined” with Michael Casey and Sheila Warren to discuss Project Liberty, an initiative to reimagine the internet from the ground up.
The future internet needs to be built with societal governance at its core. McCourt argues for entirely new protocols designed to follow the principles and governance structures researched and established to address faults within the current web.
A safer internet is on the horizon, one with stronger personal data rights, decentralized power and a balance of truth, trust and transparency.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine with additional production support from Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
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Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
The future of blockchains is in question, with some experts warning that their power could be vulnerable to quantum computing techniques. The problem lies within the fact they are currently based on outdated technology and would eventually become obsolete if not updated soon enough - which means this issue needs urgent attention from developers who want their projects protected against any potential risks arising out of it!
Join "Money Reimagined'' hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren from Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum Annual meeting, as they dive deep into this topic of Quantum computing with guest Jack Hidary of Sandbox AQ,an enterprise company combining AI and Quantum tech to solve hard problems facing society.
Jack discusses how the application of these new quantum techniques to process massive amounts of data, in conjunction with blockchain-based verification systems can speed up innovation; such as improving battery storage or finding drugs which have yet to be discovered.
And as Hidary suggests these new quantum techniques can accelerate computation and encryption to speeds that would have been unimaginable just 30 years ago. This will change everything we know about data storage and transmission of information- it's almost like science fiction!
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EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
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Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
The crypto community is faced with the challenge of scalability. Can we build a blockchain that is secure, permissionless and scalable? And what needs to happen in order for people all over the world to start using it easily?
The answer to the first question is still up for debate. There are many different solutions being proposed, but no clear consensus has emerged. The second question is easier to answer. In order for blockchain to be adopted on a mass scale, it needs to be easy to use. This means building user-friendly interfaces and simplifying the process of buying, selling and exchanging blockchain-based assets. It also requires increasing the efficiency of blockchain networks so that they can handle large numbers of transactions without slowing down. These are daunting challenges, but if the blockchain is going to achieve its full potential, they must be conquered.
Join "Money Reimagined'' host Michael Casey as he discusses these issues with Alex Zinder, the global head of Ledger Enterprise, and Dr. Naveen Singh, the CEO of Inery. They'll discuss Ledger's Nano series of hardware wallets, which allow users to keep their tokens safe in their hands, and Inery's blockchain protocol, which helps manage both a decentralized storage network and a decentralized database. They'll also talk about how these technologies can help make blockchain more user-friendly as they also dive deeper into the core elements of security, decentralization and efficiency.
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EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
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Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
UST, the algorithmic stablecoin created by Terraform Labs, was de-pegged this week from the U.S. dollar.
UST's price initially dropped from a one-to-one U.S. dollar value to 60 cents and then fell further. The cause of the de-pegging is due to the sell-off in crypto and in financial markets. The price drop in UST highlights the risks associated with cryptocurrencies and their volatility, which further poses the question of when regulators will step in. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had a few remarks concerning the de-pegging and reaffirmed to the world that the Fed is watching.
Join “Money Reimagined” host Michael Caseywith Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, the lead manager of USDC, a prominent stablecoin backed by dollar-based liquid assets, and CoinDesk technology reporter Sam Kessler as they discuss this complicated issue of how the UST peg system is supposed to work and what really went wrong.
After UST lost its peg to the U.S. dollar, $1.5 million of bitcoin reserves was used to defend the peg. Is the underlying algorithm sufficient to keep the token at a stable rate of one dollar? What are the alternatives? Are there other models, collateralized models that would be more effective?
Allaire further explains on how the structure of Circles model may offer more stability and security to investors.
- Recorded on Tuesday, May 10, 2022.
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EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
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Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by EY.
Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are enabling entrepreneurs to rapidly raise funding and reach global markets in countries where traditional structures might not be effective or even available.
Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey is Geoffrey See, founder of Choson Exchange, an organization training North Koreans in entrepreneurship, and chief DAOist at Poko, which focuses on replacing LLCs with DAOs in emerging markets. See joins to explain the unique value DAOs offer to entrepreneurs in frontier hubs worldwide.
See explains that an on-chain governance structure can offer stability and security to a newly founded company in ways that existing institutions might not and enable access to an enthusiastic global market of investors and customers. The question of regulation and when the regulatory tone might sway against this new corporate structure remains a challenge entrepreneurs must prepare for.
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EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
-
Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Blockchains are systems of governance written into code, algorithms dictating how users behave. The question of who gets to develop these systems and these rules becomes immensely important.
Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are Susan Joseph, executive director of fintech at Cornell, and Cleve Mesidor, executive director of the Blockchain Foundation. The guests provide insights on why crypto is not yet a diverse industry and steps to improve access and education for all.
Crypto, with its innovations in financial technology, provides underbanked populations with better access. But even when these groups have access, they might not receive the same treatment as others. Crypto needs to incentivize inclusion, respect, inclusion and empowerment to improve the industry for all who partake in it.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
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EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
-
Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io, Quantstamp and EY.
The tone in Washington has shifted over the past year, with lawmakers joining regulators in recognizing that the crypto industry should be taken seriously.
But how does Washington actually see crypto?
To answer this question, “Money Reimagined” host Sheila Warren is joined by two guests intimately familiar with the attitudes of Capitol Hill: Cory Gardner, former senator and representative from Colorado, and Niki Christoff, CEO of Washington-based strategic consultancy Christoff & Co. and host of the podcast “Tech’ed Up.”
The trio debate Washington’s perceptions of crypto, and how that perception might impact future policy decisions. The speed of innovation in the crypto industry is bound to create educational gaps for lawmakers, while policy lags even further behind. How can the crypto industry present itself in digestible and compelling ways for those in Washington?
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From cash to crypto in no time with Nexo. Invest in hot coins and swap between exclusive pairs for cash back, earn up to 17% interest on your idle crypto assets and borrow against them for instant liquidity. Simple and secure. Head on to nexo.io and get started now.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
-
Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io, Quantstamp and EY.
U.S. securities laws, largely dating back to the 1930s, are proving to be a challenge to integrate into the developing world of blockchain technology.
Joining this episode of “Money Reimagined” with Sheila Warren and Michael Casey is Chris Brummer, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. Brummer introduces what defines a security, then describes where these definitions fall short when it comes to blockchain technology.
Brummer’s recent white paper, “Disclosure, Dapps and DeFi,” published in the Stanford Journal of Blockchain Law and Policy, details his ideas for a new disclosure framework for crypto markets. He walks through how disclosure integration with decentralized finance could achieve key policy goals like protecting against fraud, maintaining level playing fields and promoting consumer education without burdening innovation.
From cash to crypto in no time with Nexo. Invest in hot coins and swap between exclusive pairs for cash back, earn up to 17% interest on your idle crypto assets and borrow against them for instant liquidity. Simple and secure. Head on to nexo.io and get started now.
-
Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
-
Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io, Quantstamp and EY.
Critics of blockchain forensic technology see the surveillance as a breach of a vital right to privacy. But the privacy features that blockchain technology introduces isn’t in its secrecy, but in its transparency.
Simone Maini, CEO of blockchain analytics company Elliptic joins “Money Reimagined” with hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren to debate the balance between privacy and transparency. Maini explains what analytics techniques can do to help build trust in the entire ecosystem.
The openness of transactions, paired with a setting of pseudonymity and limited personal information, creates an environment where secure and trusted transactions can take place without the need for a centralized entity overseeing the market.
In order for crypto to continue to evolve, Maini believes collaboration with regulators as an important step: “We shouldn't expect that crypto can really become part of mainstream financial services, if we don't have a layer of regulatory compliance around it.” How does blockchain analytics factor into policy changes?
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From cash to crypto in no time with Nexo. Invest in hot coins and swap between exclusive pairs for cash back, earn up to 17% interest on your idle crypto assets and borrow against them for instant liquidity. Simple and secure. Head on to nexo.io and get started now.
-
Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
-
Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io, Quantstamp and EY.
“While there is quite a bit of interest, there's still quite a bit of skepticism” when it comes to crypto solutions for humanitarian aid, Jeremiah Centrella says.
Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey is Jeremiah Centrella, a partner at the law firm of Nichols Liu and former general counsel at Mercy Corps. Centrella explains where humanitarian aid organizations are on their journey of exploration of crypto and the value proposition these organizations provide for the crypto ecosystem.
Centrella identifies the common hesitancies organizations experience before considering crypto, including a fear of the more negative narratives surrounding crypto. Increased awareness, education and technology integration can help crypto solutions take hold.
The many complexities of humanitarian aid solutions prove a challenge for crypto integration. A carefully crafted solution, always with the needs of the people prioritized over the technology, must be flexible and adaptable in order to best assist those in need.
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From cash to crypto in no time with Nexo. Invest in hot coins and swap between exclusive pairs for cash back, earn up to 17% interest on your idle crypto assets and borrow against them for instant liquidity. Simple and secure. Head on to nexo.io and get started now.
-
Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
EY is proud to sponsor “Money Reimagined.” As businesses prepare for the token economy, EY is committed to building a better working world and connecting global business ecosystems on the public Ethereum blockchain. To learn more about the EY Blockchain portfolio of products and services, visit blockchain.ey.com.
-
Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9–12 in Austin, TX. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MoneyReimagined15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at www.coindesk.com/consensus2022.
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Quantstamp.
Our faith in the reliability of digital media is, simply put, broken.
The proliferation of disinformation online has seeped into all aspects of life. Elections, the pandemic, and now, a war are all targets of organized campaigns to obfuscate or even rewrite truth and facts. At the same time, censorship of vulnerable populations is on the rise, only further restricting the flow of information.
Enter cryptography, decentralized networks and the blockchain.
Joining “Money Reimagined” with Sheila Warren and Michael Casey is Jonathan Dotan, founding director of the Starling Lab. Dotan and the Starling Lab are prototyping cryptographic methods and decentralized web protocols with the aim of establishing trust in the future of history, journalism and law.
Irrefutable evidence of war crimes was brought forth during the Nuremberg trials following World War II, ensuring some form of justice would come to fruition. In 2022, Ukrainian citizens are now the ones recording this irrefutable evidence, equipped with smartphones and social media. New tools are needed to preserve this unprecedented flow of information to eventually render justice for those impacted by the war.
Is blockchain technology the solution?
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Take your crypto to the next level with Nexo. Invest and swap instantly, earn up to 20% APR on your idle assets or borrow cash against them at industry-leading rates. Get started today at nexo.io to receive up to a $100 welcome bonus. Valid through March 31.
-
Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
Consensus 2022, the industry’s most influential event, is happening June 9–12 in Austin, TX. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the fast-moving world of crypto, Web 3 and NFTs, this is the festival experience for you. Use code MoneyReimagined15 to get 15% off your GA and Pro pass at coindesk.com/consensus2022.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Quantstamp.
Explorations into digital currency technologies will shape the evolution of the global financial system, so understanding the African continent’s approach to money is key.
Joining this episode of “Money Reimagined” with hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey is Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO of African fintech firm AZA Finance. Rossiello previously joined the show in 2020 to discuss international crypto adoption.
AZA announced this week a partnership with exchange FTX to build continent-wide infrastructure, education programs and crypto solutions to help accelerate Africa's integration into the emerging Web 3 economy.
Though there were challenges, innovative solutions were found to implement effective digital payment solutions across the continent. How will crypto’s influence impact Africa in the coming years?
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Take your crypto to the next level with Nexo. Invest and swap instantly, earn up to 20% APR on your idle assets or borrow cash against them at industry-leading rates. Get started today at nexo.io to receive up to a $100 welcome bonus. Valid through March 31.
-
Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Quantstamp.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) joins “Money Reimagined” with Sheila Warren and Michael Casey to reflect on the impact of the infrastructure bill, explain the difficulties of applying regulation to an evolving technology and take a look at where policy on stablecoins and token investing might be headed.
When the infrastructure bill introduced language that could be damaging to the crypto industry, a bipartisan group including Sens. Toomey, Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) proposed an amendment. Crypto stood out as common ground in a polarizing era of politics.
In the time since then, regulators have struggled to fit crypto into existing regulatory frameworks. U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent executive order, signed the day after this episode was recorded, addressed some of these challenges by directing federal agencies to unify their efforts toward regulating crypto.
See Also: Biden Issues Long-Awaited US Executive Order on Crypto
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Take your crypto to the next level with Nexo. Invest and swap instantly, earn up to 20% APR on your idle assets or borrow cash against them at industry-leading rates. Get started today at nexo.io to receive up to a $100 welcome bonus. Valid through March 31.
-
Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Quantstamp.
Crypto’s public image has been dominated in the past week by two contrasting perspectives: financial freedom and sanctions evasion.
While the Ukrainian resistance has raised millions in crypto donations when traditional fundraising methods failed, some call for regulation to prevent Russia from using crypto to evade sanctions.
Jonathan Levin, co-founder and chief strategy officer of blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, joins “Money Reimagined” to contextualize the current conversations on wartime cryptocurrency donations.
The recent uncovering of suspects in both The DAO and Bitfinex hacks represent how transparency inherent to blockchain technology can be an effective tool for law enforcement. But what if state actors exploit this tool?
As the complexities of crypto’s use in Ukraine and Russia continue to play out, it brings to light broader issues about how a society might maintain a balance of access, privacy and inclusion alongside security and the rule of law.
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Take your crypto to the next level with Nexo. Invest and swap instantly, earn up to 20% APR on your idle assets or borrow cash against them at industry-leading rates. Get started today at nexo.io to receive up to a $100 welcome bonus. Valid through March 31.
-
Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard."
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Quantstamp.
During CoinDesk’s Tax Week, “Money Reimagined” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey dive into the fears and debates around crypto during tax season. Last year’s infrastructure bill called out crypto taxing directly, and in the time since, regulators have attempted to retrofit old rules and concepts to the completely new world of digital assets.
Crypto technology has outpaced laws as regulators scramble to find ways to integrate crypto into reporting requirements. David Kemmerer, CoinLedger co-founder and CEO, joins to provide perspective on the challenges associated with crypto taxation, while author Dan Jeffries tackles the clash between reporting requirements and the privacy principles inherent to the crypto industry.
A difference in taxation strategy could establish crypto-friendly geographic regions, attracting capital, talent and innovation to those states or countries. As decentralized organizations continue to evolve, will digital communities eventually create their own tax and regulatory structures for those who pass through their virtual spaces?
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Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your crypto. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 18% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M. Audited in real-time by Armanino. Rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Quantstamp.
As discussions around NFTs have increased in frequency, they are also increasingly divisive. Some see NFTs as the ultimate solution to all that is wrong with Web 2.0, while others see a space rife with plagiarism, fraud and false ownership.
This week on “Money Reimagined,” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey are joined by two individuals well versed in NFTs: the NFT analyst and cohost of “Edge of NFTs” podcast Eathan Janney; and the NFT evangelist, musician and entrepreneur Scott Page.
Janney and Page dive into the many complexities of NFTs, ranging from property rights to social impacts. As NFTs’ popularity has grown, so has their utility, with artists of many different mediums finding ways to tokenize their work. At the same time, scams and copyright infringement has been on the rise while regulation lags behind.
As NFTs continue to evolve, will they continue to empower creators, or will they instead become instruments of corporate greed?
Would you like to attend NFT/LA this March 28 - 31, 2022? Go to nftla.live and receive 10% off when you use the promo code MoneyReimagined10LA.
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Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your crypto. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 18% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M. Audited in real-time by Armanino. Rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
-
Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Quantstamp.
“I think that the philosophy of cryptocurrency, the decentralization concept, wasn't meant to be a speculation opportunity.”
Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren is crypto OG Francesco Rulli. Rulli’s career history ranges from founding a fashion company with actor John Malkovich, to building a film distribution network, to creating a bitcoin-based payments program for young female students in Afghanistan, to helping guide the cathedral in Florence, Italy, through a digital transformation.
A core thread running through Rulli’s varied career is the belief in one’s purpose and responsibility to contribute to their community and to the world as a whole. Rulli believes the core value of proposition for blockchain technology is less in its current status as a generator of speculative assets and more as a tool to do social good.
The project Rulli founded with acclaimed Afghan entrepreneur Roya Mahboob, the Women’s Annex Foundation, which aimed to foster digital literacy and financial opportunities for Afghan women through bitcoin, successfully proved that the decentralization and anonymity features bitcoin could be used to better serve underrepresented populations. More recently, he has started working with museums and educational institutions to integrate donors’ patronage with NFTs so these institutions can continue to be funded as the technology advances.
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Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your crypto. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 18% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M. Audited in real-time by Armanino. Rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
-
Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Quantstamp.
Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren is Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Parity Technologies, which produces Polkadot. More recently, Wood founded the Web3 Foundation, an organization aiming to fund development teams building the decentralized internet.
First, Wood walks through the founding ideals of Polkadot, including its focus on decentralization, interoperability and efficiency. He next explains the technologies Polkadot introduced to meet the ideals and help accelerate experimentations into the future Web 3.
Wood views the transition from Web 2 to Web 3 not as an optional step, but a necessary one, adding, “We cannot afford to base our infrastructure on fundamentally flawed centralized technologies.” The current internet’s flaws in centralization and privacy concerns will be challenging to overcome in the next iteration of internet technologies, but Wood is optimistic that with the right incentives, these new solutions will be created that align with the needs of users.
How long until this vision of a better web is actualized?
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Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your crypto. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 18% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M. Audited in real-time by Armanino. Rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
-
Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.
Just in time for CoinDesk’s Privacy Week, this episode takes a deep dive into the ideals, tools and future of privacy and crypto, addressing all facets of privacy in Web 3.
Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are two guests familiar with not just the privacy pitfalls of today’s internet, but the possible solutions available to protect users. Often recognized as the father of digital currency, David Chaum has had an accomplished career in privacy-focused digital tools, first as the founder of DigiCash and now with his new secure messaging platform xx messenger. Alongside Chaum is Tor Bair, the founder of Secret Foundation, one of the core organizations supporting the private-by-default blockchain Secret Network.
Though most people understand that online privacy is a problem, the majority seem willing to trade privacy for convenience and connectivity. As a result, the privacy concerns in Web 2 have become staggeringly large, as displayed in the countless data access hacks, scandals like Cambridge Analytica and Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency revelations, among others.
Within the crypto industry, the concept of transparency is highly valued, but where is the balancing point between that transparency and privacy? Creating a secure network is important, but security is often directly tied with identity. Cryptographers have devised ways to separate the two, but will these methodologies become pervasive in Web 3?
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your crypto. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 17% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M. Audited in real-time by Armanino. Rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
-
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.
“I don't think we should feel like this is going to be entirely a good thing … if Web 3 is becoming more like the offline world, in the sense of being exclusive and gate-kept in the ways that our physical world has been for so long.”
Web 3, the metaverse and NFTs have potential to be a force for good in the world, to improve decentralization, raise underrepresented voices and empower creators. But with a digital land grab for virtual real estate growing fast, will people soon find themselves locked out of the metaverse?
Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren is Kevin Roose, New York Times tech columnist and author of “Futureproof,” a cautiously optimistic look into an automated, AI-filled and algorithmically driven future. Roose has also delved into the world of crypto: In March of 2021, he wrote a column explaining non-fungible tokens (NFT), and then sold that column as an NFT for 350 ETH ($1.14 million at current prices.).
The future is rapidly approaching and the crypto industry is determined to establish its place in it. Web 3 is shaping up in opposition to the current Web 2, moving away from the centralized, data-driven approach of today's internet. Alongside Web 3 is the metaverse, where individuals can fragment themselves into two parts: their physical self, and their digital persona.
Before Web 3 and the metaverse take hold, important discussions should be had now about the opportunities and obstacles abound in a crypto future. What is the role of media in Web 3? What responsibilities do journalists in the crypto sector have today? Is it possible to remain hopeful and yet cautious of crypto’s role in shaping the coming years?
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
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Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your crypto. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 17% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M. Audited in real-time by Armanino. Rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.
In theory, crypto and blockchain technology present unique opportunities to improve, accelerate and strengthen global aid efforts. In practice, geopolitical challenges and complexities in distribution hinder projects before they’ve even had a chance to deploy the new technology.
Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are Sara Pantuliano, chief executive of ODI and member of the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, and Sasha Kapadia, director in the Humanitarian and Development group at Mastercard. The guests are intimately familiar with the processes and challenges associated with cross-border aid efforts, as well as the opportunities for blockchain integrated aid in the future.
How can blockchain-based digital aid solutions improve the lives of those in crisis? Even if the technology could be helpful, is it ethical to test emergent technology on a vulnerable population?
Blockchain technology is likely to be increasingly included in aid solutions in the next decade. Alongside the sweeping potential , it’s also important to maintain awareness of its dangers if communities are to avoid widening the “digital divide” that developing technologies can easily create.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your crypto. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 17% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M. Audited in real-time by Armanino. Rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
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This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.
“We can’t use 1920s to 1940s definitions in securities laws for digital assets … We need to bring our laws into the 21st century,” Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) says.
Cryptocurrency has emerged as a topic around which representatives from both sides of the aisle can create coalitions with aligned interests and values while constructively disagreeing on other matters. Last year, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), a co-chairman of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus, joined “Money Reimagined” to discuss how crypto is being received in Congress.
In this episode, hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are joined by Soto, the second co-chairman of the caucus, to provide a Democrat’s perspective on the state of crypto legislation. Soto introduced two bipartisan bills last summer, the Blockchain Innovation Act and parts of the Digital Taxonomy Act, which were the first blockchain bills to ever pass the House as part of H.R. 3723, the Consumer Safety Technology Act.
Soto explains the many challenges facing crypto’s advocates in Washington, from educating colleagues to outdated securities laws. With representatives like Soto and Emmer pushing for more education, recognition and legislation for crypto, will 2022 bring more certainty and jurisdiction to the industry?
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your crypto. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 17% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M. Audited in real-time by Armanino. Rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.
For the last day for 2021 and the end of a two-week break for Money Reimagined, we’re serving up the second of two of our favorite episodes from the past year.
Michael Casey’s pick was the episode from Sept. 15, not because that’s his birthday and not only because in that one he had the pleasure of meeting co-host Sheila Warren’s “chithi” (aunt), Dr. Usha Ramanathan. It was mainly because Ramanahan’s insights and those of the second guest, Marta Belcher, zeroed in on why maintaining data privacy is a matter of protecting our very humanity.
Ramanathan is a lawyer and an influential human rights activist in India. She has worked since 2009 to challenge India’s controversial digital identity program, Aadhaar, the world’s largest biometric ID system. Belcher serves as general counsel of Protocol Labs, chair of the Filecoin Foundation and special counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Aadhaar has long been a lightning rod for the kind of privacy advocates who are often drawn to crypto and warn of the authoritarian threats from a government controlling such a large, centralized database of personal information. To that critique, the tech firms that built and now support India’s system have typically responded that they are overcoming the so-called “digital divide,” providing powerful, “programmable” IDs to the poor so that they can not only access the kind of services we take for granted but build new services on top of them.
Ramanathan turns that counter-argument on its head. She suggests backers of Aadhaar and other universal identity systems have fostered a myth that official IDs are necessary for citizens to participate in the economy when it’s perfectly possible to conceive of an effective economic system in which people prosper without compromising their privacy. Belcher then puts all this into the context of how our private data is being captured by centralized corporate internet platforms and whether or not decentralized solutions using cryptocurrencies and blockchains can free us from this.
It’s a great episode and well worth a lesson as we head into a new year in which the battle of the future of our digital economy is poised to intensify.
This episode was produced, edited and announced by Michele Musso. Our Holiday theme songs are from Joshua Spacht.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
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KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus atKuCoin.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.
This week and next we’re taking a year-end holiday from new episodes of “Money Reimagined.” Instead, we’re serving up a couple of our favorites from this year.
This week’s pick was Sheila Warren’s: the Haiti episode from May 21.
That’s when Sheila and co-host Michael Casey were joined by Jerry Tardieu, a Haitian author, entrepreneur and politician who represents Petion-ville in the Chamber of Deputies, and by Daniele Jean-Pierre, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Zimbali networks, which delivers smart-ledger solutions for the decentralized economy.
The pair walked us through Haiti’s history to show how a shameful, century-long legacy of a slavery-era debt continues to be a burden for the country. The debt, imposed by France to punish Haiti’s citizens for freeing themselves from their slave masters in a rebellion that won their independence in 1804, later became a U.S.-owned asset serviced by a bank that would become Citibank. In that sense, this long-standing problem is directly related to the issue of Wall Street’s power and dominance in the age of dollar hegemony, a power that is challenged, in theory, by cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
The discussion then turns to what solutions, technological or otherwise, might exist to create a system that empowers people rather than leaves them dependent on charity and foreign aid, with all the strings that come attached to that.
It’s the kind of episode that reminds us why the ideas behind crypto and blockchain matter.
This episode was produced, edited and announced by Michele Musso. Our Holiday theme song is "Father Christmas" by Cody Martin.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
-
KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus atKuCoin.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.
Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Matt Homer, who is the former executive deputy superintendent for research and innovation at the New York Department of Financial Services. The two walk through the expected crypto integrations coming to their cities and the anticipated challenges that come with introducing this new technology at the municipal level.
MiamiCoin is the first coin of its type, where a city is granted yield from the mining of their coin. Close on Miami’s heels is New York City, with its newly elected and crypto-friendly Mayor Eric Adams and the new NYCCoin. Both New York’s NYCCoin and MiamiCoin are issued by CityCoins, whose tokens operate with smart contracts on Stacks, a protocol built on Bitcoin.
Though these city coins present an exciting opportunity for cities to tap new sources of revenue and to experiment with engaging their communities in new technologies, they also come with potential challenges ranging from volatility to accessibility. How do Miami and New York and Homer intend to mitigate these risks?
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
-
KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.
On this week’s “Money Reimagined” podcast, Michael Casey and Sheila Warren discuss with CoinDesk’s managing editor of global policy and regulation, Nikhilesh De, his recent review of another cryptocurrency-themed hearing on Capitol Hill by the House Financial Services Committee.
“Today's hearing is part of this committee’s ongoing [effort]” to understand crypto and the issues around it.’ Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the committee chairwoman, stated as she kicked off the hearing.
Financial inclusion appeared to be a big selling point from the industry representatives, but were the congressmen and women buying it? And yet even though the tone was comparatively more positive then before, regulation seemed to still remain a major issue.
For more information and an examination of the intersection of cryptocurrency and government, read Nik De’s Newsletter ‘State of Crypto’.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
-
KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus atKuCoin.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.
This week’s “Money Reimagined” podcast comes to you from Miami, where the annual Art Basel event spawned an explosion of sub-conferences and parties associated with non-fungible tokens (NFT).
There, we ran into Pierina Merino, the founder of FlickPlay, an exciting new app that combines real-world, camera-captured imagery with digital artifacts so that users can create and place geo-located NFT collectibles. It’s best described as a merging of Pokémon GO with TikTok and NFTs.
Co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren sat down with Merino to discuss her vision for this project. What emerges is a fascinating discussion around how we human beings project our own “storylines” and how content-generation technology is allowing the merging of the digital with the physical realm.
Merino’s background as Venezuelan-born, U.S.-trained architect (as in a physical building architect, not a software engineer) is part of what makes this conversation so interesting. She speaks to how that sensibility with the limits of physical space shapes people’s creativity and their self expression for how they live in the world.
What does this all have to do with money? A lot more than you’d think.
With NFTs now in the mix, this combination of identity, user-generated content and hybrid physical-digital content constitutes a new form of value creation and transactions.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard."
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
-
KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
With the advent of cryptocurrency and related technologies, and with the failure of the existing banking-centric monetary architecture to address inequities and avoid financial crises, the one thing people tend to agree on is that our system of money needs an overhaul, specifically an upgrade to meet the needs of the digital economy.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.
But what form should it take? And who gets to decide?
This week, “Money Reimagined” co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren talk to two guests who’ve thought as much about these issues as anyone.
Brett King is the author ofsix books and the founder of payment app Moven. Via his “Breaking Banks” podcast, he has been talking about the disruption of money since well before the crypto boom.
Patrick Murck, a research affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, is probably the very first lawyer to ever take an interest in bitcoin. That led him to help found the Bitcoin Foundation in 2012. More recently, Murck has moved somewhat away from bitcoin. As president and chief legal officer at stealthy startup Transparent Financial Systems, he is seeking to take our existing system of money and transform it into a digital, community-based framework that’s open, programmable, interoperable and privacy-preserving.
The launching pad for the discussion was King’s latest book, co-written with Dr. Richard Petty, which carries the provocative title of “The Rise of Technosocialism.” Does new money technology allow us to get away from some of the core tenets of contemporary capitalism to provide things like Universal Basic Income? Or, do we run the risk of undermining the notion of private property and ownership, feeding some of the more radical, decentralizing principles of the crypto movement?
From there, the conversation goes to the heart of what matters to society, and the big questions of how we optimize for them.
It rounds out with a look at money itself. What is the role for the state in money? What is the role for communities to apply their own values to monetary systems?
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Why was the Philippines uniquely primed for the rapid and widespread adoption of Axie Infinity and other crypto opportunities?
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.
Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are Maoi Arroyo, serial entrepreneur and founder of Ignite Impact Fund, the first fund focused on eradicating income and access poverty in the Philippines, and Leah Callon-Butler, director of Emfarsis and screenwriter of the recent “Play to Earn” documentary. Maoi and Callon-Butler bring a depth of understanding of the economic, political and social context of the Philippines and the recent Axie Infinity phenomenon that swept the nation.
The island nation is heavily dependent on its Overseas Filipino Workers, whose U.S.-based workers sent a combined $12 billion dollars in cash remittances back in 2020 alone. The country also faces extensive corruption dating back to the Spanish colonial administration. The low trust of Filipinos in the national economy have pushed them to innovate new ways to interact with money.
Over the summer, the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity exploded in popularity, with a significant portion of its user base hailing from the Philippines. Many Filipinos recognized the opportunities abound within the play to earn economy, and more broadly with digital payment solutions and blockchain technology. What will this ambitious, mobile-native population adopt next?
This episode was produced by Michele Musso and Adam B. Levine, with editing by Jonas. This episode was announced by Adam B. Levine with additional support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
New York City was all about NFTs this week as the third edition of NFT.NYC, New York’s non-fungible token conference, took place. It went off with a bang!
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.
The event has come far from its humble origins in 2019 and this year’s featured 600 speakers across three days and six venues throughout the city. Over the course of the event, 15 different NFT-themed billboards were featured in Times Square.
In this episode of “Money Reimagined” Sheila Warren and Michael Casey figure out what to make of the overwhelming display of innovation, creativity and speculative fervor that was unleashed with this event. To do so, they tapped the insightful mind of Sam Ewen, the head of CoinDesk Studios, who explains what this week’s conference represents and how the greater phenomenon of NFTs is sweeping through society.
The discussion explored the driving factors behind the energy that was on display, and it says about the current NFT zeitgeist. The event, which attracted 5,500 registered attendees and many more who turned up for the sideline parties and entertainment, has exploded in size since its last showing in February 2020. Back then, the event was in just one theater housing a modest gathering of early NFT enthusiasts. This year, there were more than 600 speakers appearing in concurrent programming across six venues.
Just as important was the massive amount of promotion underway. There were hundreds of exhibitors with products using NFTs for everything from music rights to wine collecting. Meanwhile, many NFT platforms, flush with cash from this year’s investment boom, put on raging parties with A-list DJs and bands and spectacular digital art installations.
To Ewen, what stood out was the passion of the various NFT communities. He described it as “evangelism,” a force that is helping to grow this space at as rapid a clip as the money that early investors are making.
But he also highlighted the hurdles, including the challenge of “gas fees,” the high transaction costs users incur for trading NFTs, especially on the Ethereum blockchain.
Either way, the conclusion from the discussion is that something big is happening in this sector, something could transform the digital economy as we know it. It’s just that with things moving so fast, it’s very difficult to predict what exactly that change will look like.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
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Nexo.iolets you borrow against your crypto at 6.9% APR, earn up to 12% on your idle assets, and exchange instantly between 100+ market pairs with the tap of a button. Get started at nexo.io.
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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Christopher Giancarlo is the former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and founding principal of the Digital Dollar Foundation, a group that supports the U.S. adopting a digital currency.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp.
Giancarlo has written a book and he came on our “Money Reimagined” podcast recently to talk about it. The book is called “Crypto Dad,” which is a nod to the affectionate nickname that members of the crypto community started giving Chris when, as head of the CFTC, he made some regulatory moves that were seen as constructive to the industry, such as the approval of bitcoin futures, which was a contentious move at the time.
The book is packed with inside-the-Beltway insights into the sausage-making behind regulation. It’s also a great primer for understanding the challenges that the U.S. faces as the technology around money goes through a dramatic transformation.
And it makes a very strong case for the federal government to act proactively to support crypto technology in a way that preserves core U.S. values.
It’s timely because right now the regulatory conversation around crypto is front and center. Just last week, the first bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund was launched after the Securities and Exchange Commission gave it the green light after years of resistance to launching a bitcoin ETF that holds physical bitcoin. Ironically, the ETF version the SEC approved is focused on bitcoin futures, a product Giancarlo’s CFTC set in motion.
But if that sounds like the SEC is now seen as a friendlier force by the crypto community, think again. Many view with concern the rather harsh tone the current SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, has taken with the industry.
There’s a lot at stake here. Not just for investors but for geopolitics, too.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
We think it’s fitting that this, the 50th episode of “Money Reimagined,” is being published inside an historic week for the crypto community, when the launch of a futures-focused bitcoin exchange-traded fund helped drive the leading cryptocurrency to a new all-time-high just shy of $67,000.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp.
It’s also fitting that at this moment in time – one that is truly looking like a “crypto moment,” defined not only by soaring bitcoin prices but also explosive interest in non-fungible tokens (NFT) and decentralized finance (DeFi) – the “Money Reimagined” guest this week is someone who’s been involved in the crypto journey for almost a decade.
Joining Michael Casey and Sheila Warren for this special “OG edition” is Balaji Srinivasan, a serial entrepreneur, investor and influential essayist. Srinivasan is a former CTO of Coinbase, a former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and the founder of 21.co, earn.com and a variety of other startups. His eclectic interests range from genetics – in which he led research at Stanford – to finance, to political history, to the future of journalism.
Last year, Srinivasan was recognized as one of CoinDesk’s “Most Influential,” as much as for his prescient warnings about COVID-19 and for mobilizing the crypto community to respond to it as for his insights into the direction of the blockchain technology. More recently, he has become a somewhat controversial critic of media organizations and an advocate for new, decentralized models of truth.
That latter topic is where this week’s conversation ended up. What began as a discussion about Srinivasan’s early interests in bitcoin and how it saw it playing into his view of technological disruption as history’s main driver of economic and social transformation moved into an even deeper consideration of the nature of “truth” and who gets to define it.
Have a listen as Srinivasan breaks down his arguments for why the future lies in trusting distributed “cryptographic truth” rather than the values of centralized news organizations.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is Shepard.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This week’s edition of “Money Reimagined” explores the ramifications of a startling shift in the rankings of the world’s top locations for bitcoin mining. The U.S. has leapt into first place and China, the world leader just a few months ago, now has essentially zero mining capacity following a regulatory crackdown there in June. Co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren talk to Justin Podhola, the CEO of Elite Mining, and George Kaloudis, who leads CoinDesk’s Bitcoin-focused research.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp.
The show keys off a report from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) that found that as of the end of August, the U.S accounted for more than 35% of the global Bitcoin hashrate – a measure of the total worldwide computational power used to mine bitcoin – more than double its 16.8% stake at the end of April. Over the same period, the report says, China dropped from 46% of total hashrate to zero.
Another point of interest is the rise of alternative centers, – in particular, Kazakhstan, which is now in second place with 18.1% of total hashrate, followed by Russia with 11%.
How can an industry with all that equipment and complicated energy needs move so quickly to a new location? What are geopolitical implications of China’s bitcoin mining leadership - once as high as 75% of total hashrate – now being ceded to the U.S., Kazakhstan and Russia? What does this mean for regulation, especially in the U.S., where new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Gary Gensler has been talking a hardline against crypto? Would the presence of a dominant, profitable and strategically important bitcoin industry sway policymakers toward being more or less crypto-friendly?
And most importantly, to address a topic that we’ve dived into a number of times on “Money Reimagined”: does this create an opportunity for the U.S. to lead the push for renewable energy-based mining, not only to make Bitcoin greener but to collaborate with energy developers to fund the expansion of a green grid more generally?
All that and more is discussed in this wide-ranging discussion.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is Shepard.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This week’s “Money Reimagined” episode is framed by some bombshell news developments that are adding fuel to a fire of mistrust in authority that’s been allowed to kindle into a raging threat to global financial institutions.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp.
Hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey are joined by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael S. Derby and crypto entrepreneur Maya Zhehavi to discuss two sets of revelations that go to the heart of these problems and what they imply for the crypto industry.
One is the Pandora Papers investigation, the results of which were released last week and which the blew the lid off an elaborate global system of obfuscation by which a very long list of rich, powerful political leaders, business people and celebrities have evaded trillions of dollars in taxes and avoided scrutiny of their questionable business activities.
The other revolves around some revelations about stock trading activity by Federal Reserve officials, which led to the resignation of the heads of two regional Fed banks and has put Chairman Jerome Powell’s renomination prospects in jeopardy.
The show dives into what has happened and what this means for confidence in the financial system and its stewards. How much does it matter that people feel as if the system is designed not for them, but for elites? Will these feed into faith in money itself? And, if so, what comes next? Is it bitcoin? Stablecoins? Central bank digital currencies that compete with each other?
Having a seasoned Fed reporter in the mix of guests, the conversation inevitably also dives into the outlook for a digital dollar and what objectives it would serve.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine.
Our theme song is Shepard.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
It’s hard to believe it has been a year since Michael Casey and Sheila Warren launched the “Money Reimagined” podcast.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp
And what a year it has been: some rich, probing discussions about the past and future of money, the challenges of regulation and blockchain governance, the battle for financial inclusion, the shifting geopolitical landscape, the anthropology of money and much, much more. All of that while the crypto market soared to a valuation of more than $2 trillion, NFTs went parabolic, the U.S. government got tougher with the sector, China kicked out its bitcoin miners, El Salvador made bitcoin a legal tender, DeFi innovation exploded, and a relentless pandemic continued with no end in sight.
To look back on all of that and to help them celebrate this anniversary, Michael and Sheila were joined by a pair who delivered one of the more memorable discussions of the past year: Jill Carlson, the founder of the Open Money Initiative, and Raoul Pal, CEO and founder of Real Vision.
With the controversial recent rollout of El Salvador’s Bitcoin project as its backdrop, the discussion updated the somewhat competing perspective that Carlson and Pal had explored in a December 11 episode last year on whether speculation on bitcoin as an asset is compatible with its prospects as a tool for payments and financial inclusion for the poor.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is Shepard.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Recent comments from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler have reignited the discussion of the future of crypto ETFs in the U.S.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Insider Protocol.
In this week’s episode of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey dive into the world of crypto ETFs and their rocky history with U.S. regulatory bodies. Fred Pye, CEO of 3iQ Corp., joins Warren and Casey to walk through 3iQ’s journey to become the first Canadian investment fund manager to offer a public bitcoin investment fund.
An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a vehicle through which an investor can access a diversified portfolio of crypto tokens and coins. Though there are many ETFs covering bonds, stocks, commodities and more available to American investors, the SEC has yet to approve a crypto ETF. The first Bitcoin ETF up for consideration was filed in 2013. Since then, 18 applications have been rejected or delayed.
With the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seemingly inching closer to approving a narrowly defined version of a bitcoin ETF, Pye’s insights offer some useful lessons learned from the launch of 3iQ’s Canadian dollar- and U.S. dollar-denominated bitcoin fund.
3iQ now manages over $2.5 billion in assets, offering an indication of the kind of money that might flow into the sector if the giant U.S. institutional market were given the opportunity to invest in bitcoin ETFs.
We discuss the work 3iQ did to get regulators comfortable with its price references and the way it structures and manages its funds. There’s something of a square peg-meets-round hole problem with digital assets that trade 24/7, often on unregulated exchanges and with highly volatile moves and social media-driven narratives. But as Pye points out, it’s not the regulators’ job to contain an asset’s volatility. It’s to ensure that what the asset manager is promising is delivered.
So, with that in mind, what will a U.S. ETF mean for bitcoin (and later or ether and other digital assets when these are added to the approved U.S. offerings) if and when it is approved?
Will people own crypto in their 401 (k)s? Will there be a surge of institutional money into bitcoin? Does it matter that the SEC is leaning toward first approving a bitcoin ETF backed not by the underlying bitcoin but by bitcoin futures? And what does that mean for all the spot bitcoin-backed ETF proposals that have been pending approval for what has, for some, been as long as eight years of waiting?
These questions and more, all discussed in this week’s episode of “Money Reimagined.”
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
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The Option X algorithm from Insider Protocol allows not only hedge funds but also ordinary users to earn up to 25% per month using the High Frequency Trade Layering method with our Bitcoin bot. You can swap your crypto instantly with our Atlas Swap. For more information, visit insiderprotocol.com
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This episode was produced by Michele Musso, edited by Jonas with announcements by Adam B. Levine.
Our theme song is ‘Shepard’.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In the second of our “OG edition” episodes, “Money Reimagined” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey sit down with legendary investor, startup mentor, prodigious networker, kite surfer and passionate conservationist Bill Tai.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Insider Protocol.
And as an added bonus, he is joined by Danny Yang, the CEO and cofounder of NFTs-for-charity provider Nfinita, of which Tai is the chairman. According to its website, Nfinita is working to “make giving more sustainable and scalable through NFTs, and to enable any NFT to be charitable.”
The episode is timed with the launch of OnChain Monkey, a
10,000-part collection of monkey-themed NFTs. Uniquely, the collection was created in a single transaction, dramatically reducing the transaction costs that would have otherwise been incurred by any charity that was looking to issue such NFTs for fundraising purposes.
In the episode, Tai and Yang explain how the project is looking to tap into the organizing power of communities of interest to drive the development of environmental and social impact projects. Danny also laid out Nfinita’s thinking in a blog post released shortly before this episode.
But to get this part of the story, the episode starts with Bill Tai’s personal journey. It began in bitcoin way back in 2010, famously captured in a tweet in which asked whether anyone else was experimenting with bitcoin, which he described as a “P2P digital currency” with “fascinating potential.”
But before that, as Tai recounts, it was his experience with the online game Second Life, founded by his friend Philip Rosedale, that led him to discover bitcoin. Money, he explains, is a force that drives the formation of communities, which is why Second Life took off after it created the Linden dollar.
From there it is a decade-long journey to a related idea and Tai’s latest passion: NFTs as a motivator of value to bring like-minded people to form communities around causes they believe in. It is a natural extension of Tai’s work as a conservationist, cultivated particularly in relation to the oceans, where he spends a great deal of his time kite surfing.
The conversation also delves into Tai’s enviable investment record, having been an early investor in massive success stories such as Zoom, Canva and BitFury, and his reputation as an uber-networker who has a knack for building relationships across ideas and communities.
In a period in which angst and concern loom heavy in many places, it’s a conservation that generates an infectious positivity and a hopeful view of how to solve the world’s many problems.
This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine.
Our theme song is ‘Shepard’.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
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The Option X algorithm from Insider Protocol allows not only hedge funds but also ordinary users to earn up to 25% per month using the High Frequency Trade Layering method with our Bitcoin bot. You can swap your crypto instantly with our Atlas Swap. For more information, visit insiderprotocol.com
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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The fight that crypto exchange Coinbase took to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week highlighted that the federal government’s approach to regulation is broken.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Insider Protocol.
What can be done to improve the relationship between the crypto community and the powers in Washington, D.C.? Is a more comprehensive legislative approach to regulating the industry viable, one that properly protects consumers but also embraces the positive aspects of blockchain technology to encourage innovation that serves the public good?
For this week’s episode, “Money Reimagined” co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren talked to Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) about the crypto industry’s standing in Washington and what needs to be done to foster a more constructive relationship with policymakers.
Emmer has become one of the most vocal supporters of the industry in Congress. He is the co-chair, along with Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.), of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus.
In this episode Emmer talked about the bipartisan nature of the small but growing community of crypto supporters on Capitol Hill and why the technology encourages people to cross party lines. He also discussed what needs to be done to build on that collaborative base to get meaningful reform, and what’s at stake in terms of U.S. global leadership in technology and finance if it doesn’t happen.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
-
The Option X algorithm from Insider Protocol allows not only hedge funds but also ordinary users to earn up to 25% per month using the High Frequency Trade Layering method with our Bitcoin bot. You can swap your crypto instantly with our Atlas Swap. For more information, visit insiderprotocol.com
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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Cryptocurrencies were once an obscure topic in Washington, something a lawmaker could comfortably ignore without worrying about the impact on their political prospects. Not anymore.
This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Insider Protocol.
In this week’s episode of Money Reimagined, co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren examine the small but growing political clout that the crypto industry is acquiring. The wealth the industry generates buys influence and drives the creation of products and services that threaten the incumbent interests of the existing political-financial system.
They do so with the help of Jarrod Loadholt, a partner within law firm Ice Miller’s Public Affairs Group, who, among other prior roles, has acted as senior counsel to the House Committee on Financial Services and CoinDesk’s own Nikhilesh De, our managing editor for policy and regulation.
Loadholt and De walk us through the many regulatory issues coming down the pike for the crypto and digital assets industry. They discuss the fight over the infrastructure bill’s flawed crypto tax-reporting provision and what it means for crypto companies’ compliance obligations, the outlook for ETFs and the need for an international regulatory framework for the industry.
They also talk about the possibility of a turf war between the Commodities and Exchange Futures Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose crypto-savvy chairman, Gary Gensler, is signaling an expanded role for the SEC in areas such as decentralized finance (DeFi).
The story that emerges is one of the legitimization of the industry as it starts to earn a seat at the table. However, extreme tensions will also continue to generate around this highly disruptive technology as the pace of innovation accelerates and continues to develop products that either skirt the law or occupy an ambiguous space within it.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over $100 billion worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
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The Option X algorithm from Insider Protocol allows not only hedge funds but also ordinary users to earn up to 25% per month using the High Frequency Trade Layering method with our Bitcoin bot. You can swap your crypto instantly with our Atlas Swap. For more information, visit insiderprotocol.com.
-
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
For this special inaugural “OG edition” of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey sit down with crypto entrepreneur, investor and long-time cypherpunk Austin Hill.
This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.
This is the first in an ad hoc series in which “crypto OGs,” people who’ve been working in the space for some time and have made significant contributions to it, discuss their origin stories, their experiences and their views of the industry’s future.
Austin Hill is the ideal person to kick this off. He is perhaps best known in the crypto community for being the first CEO of Bitcoin development company Blockstream. But his roots in crypto run much deeper than that, back to before even the arrival of Bitcoin, when he founded a company in the 1990s called Zero Knowledge Systems whose mission was to use the tools of cryptography to build business models around services designed to protect people’s privacy online. It was one of the first attempts to align business opportunities with the Cypherpunk ethos of “Don’t Trust. Verify” – a paraphrasing of Ronald Reagan that Hill and fellow Blockstream founder (now CEO) Adam Back coined together.
What we get from Hill is a journey. He tells of being influenced early on by the radical ideas of Timothy May and the Cypherpunk movement, which leads, among other projects, to some early, failed dabblings in electronic money. He then describes his discovery a decade later that Bitcoin had solved many of the problems of those first prototypes, which leads to the founding of Blockstream. We learn of why he left that well-funded company amid the stress of the brutal “block size war,” and how he has now found peace doing his own thing even as he turns his focus to the very biggest of challenges, how to save humanity from itself.
Keep your eye out for later “OG Edition” episodes in the near future.
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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s crosschain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Blockchain technology has accelerated conversations around decentralization, anonymity, agency and empowerment around the world. On this week’s “Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are joined by two experts to discuss digital security and privacy, with a focus on India.
This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.
Dr. Usha Ramanathan is a lawyer and human rights activist in India. She has worked since 2009 to critique and challenge India’s controversial digital identity program. Marta Belcher serves as general counsel of Protocol Labs, chair of the Filecoin Foundation and special counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Belcher recently testified on crypto before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
Initiatives have been popping up around the globe, claiming to address social issues such as banking the unbanked, humanitarian data within refugee camps and identification programs to increase access to governmental programs. There is a romantic appeal to believing these initiatives are built upon a foundation of good intentions, but the reality is often far more complicated, with motivations like a simple money grab, user data collection, or surveillance coming into the mix. And regardless of intentions, these efforts often result in harmful consequences to the users they are engaging.
India’s Aadhaar structure, a biometric, digital and physical identity system, is the world’s largest biometric ID system. It is highly centralized, and the data honeypot it presents has gotten the government of India in trouble more than once. An increasing number of systems, from the mundane like grocery shopping to the official like marriage registrations, require an Aadhaar number.
And it’s not a perfect system. Individuals can and have been barred from receiving essentials because of technical snags in the registration process with Aadhaar. The system also brings up serious privacy concerns.
While some choose to use blockchain technology for its ability to transact anonymously, others work towards establishing digital self-sovereign identity solutions. Where is the balancing point between anonymity and ease of use? Is the additional space anonymity provides around an individual essential to their rights in markets and society?
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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s crosschain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.
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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This week on “Money Reimagined,” we reflect back on the “Nixon Shock” of Aug. 15, 1971 - 50 years ago this week – when the dollar was removed from its peg to gold and the world of finance was turned upside down.
This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.
Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of a number of books on currencies and the international monetary system, joined Michael Casey and Sheila Warren to discuss the legacy of this moment. Also chiming in was CoinDesk’s managing editor of podcasts, Adam B. Levine.
When President Richard Nixon made his drastic decision to remove the dollar from its peg to gold, it prompted all other countries to de-peg their currencies from the dollar, thereby ending the Bretton Woods managed exchange rate system that had been in place since 1944. By extension, it kickstarted the era of fiat currencies that we still live in.
The world that emerged out of that move – one in which the supply of currencies was now at the discretion of monetary officials – set the tone for the current challenges of the global financial system and the powerful role that central banks now play. This monetary history also provides vital context for the efforts by bitcoin and cryptocurrency advocates to build an alternative to that system.
Prasad recognized the disruption that digital currency technology seems poised to bring to the world of money and sees a competition for supremacy emerging. However, he was lukewarm about the utility of bitcoin in that future, in part because he believes the element that most bitcoiners are drawn to – its fixed supply – is more of a bug than a feature. The real risk in the global economy, he says, is a fall in prices, not inflation. To stave off the threat of a self-destructive deflationary spiral, he said, monetary issuers need discretionary power to increase money supply
That set up a healthy debate with Levine, who argued for the superiority of the Bitcoin protocol’s predictable supply function to generate public “trust” over the discretion of central bankers and who claimed that inflation has been severely understated ever since the Nixon Shock.
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Unique One Network is an interoperable platform for DeFi-enabled NFT marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s cross-chain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.
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In this week’s episode, we go to Ireland.
“Money Reimagined” co-hosts Sheila Warren and Michael J. Casey are joined by Michael O’Sullivan, the author of “The Levelling,” which describes the post-globalization era, and Lory Kehoe, director, Digital Assets & Blockchain at BNY Mellon and the founder of Blockchain Ireland.
This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.
The topic, nominally, is the Biden Administration's proposal to harmonize international tax rates and Ireland’s resistance to that.
What does this have to do with crypto? A lot, it turns out.
A common concern among regulators of cryptocurrencies is that a lack of international harmony across jurisdictions creates “regulatory arbitrage” for developers of what is a global, borderless 24/7 technology and market.
The idea, flagged by Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler in his impactful speech this week, is that if there’s no consistency in rules around the world, crypto businesses will pick and choose where they base their operations and tend toward the most lax regulatory regime. Regulators like Gensler fear this fosters a race to the bottom, opening the door for criminals and the worst actors to find their way in.
Makes sense, right?
But there’s another side to the story about the policy variance around the world. That is, it allows smaller countries to find opportunities they might not otherwise have to attract international investors and to build their own vibrant domestic economies on the back of that.
As we learn from Sullivan and Kehoe, Ireland’s use of competitively low corporate tax rates had a sweeping impact on the Irish economy that went far beyond multinationals setting up headquarters there. It was the spark that generated a vibrant ecosystem of innovation, a holistic growth machine that continues to underpin Ireland’s decades-long economic expansion.
With many in Ireland looking to create a crypto-friendly regulatory framework to encourage innovation in digital assets and fintech, that experience poses real questions about how far governments should go toward harmonizing their rules.
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Unique One Network is an interoperable platform for DeFi-enabled NFT marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s cross-chain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.
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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
You can think of this week’s episode as a nod to what crypto people call the “no coiners,” an effort to listen to the community’s critics and weigh the value of their analysis.
This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network, Mimo and Quantstamp.
To do so, “Money Reimagined” co-hosts Sheila Warren and Michael J. Casey are joined by Noelle Acheson, head of Market Insights at Genesis. (A trading company, Genesis is owned by CoinDesk parent Digital Currency Group.) The trio take a couple of crypto-critical essays and dissect them.
At a time when cryptocurrencies seem to be under attack, especially from government officials, it’s tempting for people in the crypto community to drop into defensive mode, which mostly translates into dismissive mode.
Whether it’s criticisms of bitcoin’s energy usage, complaints about illicit activity through crypto, or people pointing out how many outrights scams are run through this technology, the industry’s response is typically to mock the critic for their ignorance or hypocrisy in ways that can sound to outsiders like whataboutism.
Sure, sometimes it’s warranted, as with Crypto Twitter’s response to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) claim earlier this week that a crypto-based financial system would be run at the “whims of some shadowy, faceless group of super-coders.” Some memes were acutely on point; many others were just downright hilarious.
But often the knee-jerk dismissiveness backfires against the community. It can come across as cult-like, a failure to embrace and learn from criticism and a reluctance to consider the views of others. This is not how you bridge divides and expand adoption.
So, in its own humble attempt to take a more reflective stance, “Money Reimagined” takes a look at two noteworthy criticisms of the crypto space.
One is a thoughtful essay entitled “I, Token: The untold story of the hole in Bitcoin's heart” from Brett Scott, an essayist who explores the intersection of money and society, often with the bent of an anthropologist. The piece argues that bitcoin enthusiasts fail to imbue the cryptocurrency with true meaning because they focus on the “function” of bitcoin (what it does) and not its structure (what it is). Along the way, he makes some compelling points about the difference between “price” and “value.”
The other is a blog post by International Monetary Fund staffers Tobias Adrian and Rhoda Weeks-Brown, in which they argue cryptoassets are not viable for governments to explore as alternatives to state-run currencies.
We hope you enjoy listening.
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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s cross chain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.
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Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
Image credit: Stanislav Gvozd/iStock/Getty Images Plus, modified by Coindesk
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Stablecoins are suddenly all over the news, with their explosive growth posing all sorts of questions for investors and regulators alike.
This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network, Mimo and Quantstamp.
To discuss, co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are joined this week by Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Avanti, a Wyoming-based digital assets bank, and George Selgin, director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute.
We start with a striking fact: the supply of the top 10 stablecoins pegged one-to-one with the U.S. dollar is up fourfold from the beginning of the year, at $109 billion. That’s more than three times the combined value of PayPal and Venmo’s outstanding customer accounts at the end of last quarter.
This spectacular growth is encouraging stablecoin issuers to play it big.
Circle, the issuer of the highly successful dollar-pegged token USDC, is going public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Tether, the controversial issuer of USDT, has settled a lawsuit with the New York attorney general’s office and is providing regular updates on its token’s reserve backing. It is also now branching out into other markets, including a euro-backed stablecoin. And Paxos is expanding a digital asset servicing agreement with PayPal that’s sure to bring opportunities for PAX and Binance’s BUSD, the two stablecoins it manages, to play a back-end role in a growing market of consumer crypto transactions.
Regulators are getting nervous.
Federal Reserve officials are worrying about potential systemic risk from economy-wide exposure to de facto dollar substitutes that may not be sufficiently backed by reserves to stand up the value investors expect them to hold. And anti-money laundering enforcement agents are worried that these tokens will facilitate illicit transactions among criminals.
So, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen convening a high-powered meeting of the most important financial regulators this week to discuss the topic, it seemed like an opportune time to dive into the outlook for stablecoins and the evolving regulatory framework.
Will regulators strike the right balance by using smart disclosure and management rules to give customers and investors confidence to use stablecoins? Or will they adopt a draconian, restrictive posture that kills off the sector’s huge innovation potential?
Long and Selgin are ideally placed to discuss these issues. Both are steeped in crypto knowledge, the structure of the banking system and regulation.
Long’s company, Avanti, is issuing its own digital dollar token, the Avit, for which it is seeking support from the Federal Reserve. Selgin, a monetary historian, is finding that his expertise in the United States’ free-banking era of the 19th century is proving especially relevant to the outlook for stablecoins in the 21st century.
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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s cross chain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.
-
Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
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Image credit: Panuwat Sikham/iStock/Getty Images Plus, modified by Coindesk
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
As we mentioned last week, this is part two of our two-part series of “Blockchain meet ESG,” an exploration of the challenges and opportunities that confront the crypto and blockchain communities as investors and businesses increasingly demand compliance with environmental, sustainability and governance objectives. This episode was recorded live Tuesday, May 25 2021 at Consensus 2021.
This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network, Mimo and Quantstamp.
In this second episode, our guests address subtleties and niches within environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG). Increasingly, blockchain technologies are employed in a variety of forms across the world to combat specific areas within ESG. These range from indigenous resource allocation and tracking to building sustainable supply chains from the ground up and applying big data to consumer water conservation. And that’s just a taste of what’s underway. At the same time, the blockchain back end’s impact on ESG is being refined, with initiatives angling to avoid worst-case scenarios of innovation, accurately quantify bitcoin energy consumption and reinforce incentives for using clean energy sources.
This time we’ll hear from a diverse array of fascinating guests:
Julius Akinyemi, founder and CEO of UWINCorp, and Lucía Gallardo, founder and CEO of Emerge, discuss blockchain solutions for free and fair trade. The two companies both focus on resource assessment. UWINCorp encodes the data and location of indigenous plants onto the blockchain, while Emerge is building an agricultural resource database.
Tanya Stephens, senior innovation leader at Procter & Gamble, addresses ways to track sustainability through supply chains and a consumer-focused water conservation coalition. The “50L Home” initiative believes that if consumers have the right data at the right time, they will be able to reduce their water consumption to only 50 liters a day.
Austin Hill, founder of Brudder Adventures and the first CEO of Blockstream, explains the “Vulnerable World Hypothesis,” which investigates how current innovations could be abused or misused in the future. Though “Vulnerable World” predicts a dim future, Hill outlines several strategies to avoid the worst-case scenarios.
Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer of Coinshares, and Anton Dek, research associate at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, outline methods for quantifying bitcoin’s energy consumption and interpret recent figures. A trend of co-locating mining facilities and renewable energy plants is placing decentralized, smaller-scale facilities on the grid.
Mike Colyer, CEO of Foundry (Foundry is owned by Digital Currency Group, the parent company of CoinDesk), and Jesse Morris, chief commercial officer of the Energy Web Foundation, present the miner’s perspective on the incentives of clean energy sources.
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Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s cross chain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.
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Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
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With Sheila out on vacation, we’re doing something different on the Money Reimagined podcast this week and next. We’re bringing you remastered versions of two one-hour CoinDesk TV shows we recorded during the Consensus virtual conference in late May.
This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network, Mimo and Quantstamp.
The theme for this two-part series was “Blockchain meet ESG,” an exploration of the challenges and opportunities that confront the crypto and blockchain communities as investors and businesses increasingly demand compliance with environmental, sustainability and governance objectives. A total of 14 guests over the two days helped us dive into how blockchain technology can help communities collectively address climate change or boost financial inclusion, and how the technology might overcome its own ESG challenges, such as Bitcoin’s carbon footprint and the crypto industry’s relative lack of diversity.
These issues have become more urgent for the crypto industry as public attention has grown on the heavy energy usage within Bitcoin’s and other protocols’ proof-of-work mining systems. These were especially aroused by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who walked back the company’s initial intention to accept bitcoin for its cars, citing environmental concerns. As Wall Street banks and asset managers put ever more resources into ESG investment vehicles and as the Biden Administration puts environmental and other concerns at the center of its regulatory agenda, these matters will only become of greater importance to the crypto industry.
Industry insiders are trying to flip the debate. With the right deals and policies in place, Bitcoin mining could be used to underwrite the rollout of renewable energy infrastructure, for example. And blockchain technology could help resolve what is arguably the biggest barrier to the effective deployment of ESG mandates: a consistent record-keeping system to accurately measure their impact. The technology could also help align incentives within an economic ecosystem so that all profit-seeking participants are motivated to achieve outcomes that serve the public good.
This first episode, recorded on Monday, May 24, tackles the complexities of counting, tracking, and reporting ESG, including climate accounting, sustainable investing, Wall Street’s ESG movement, blockchains for ESG tracking and tokenizing ESG.
You’ll hear from the following guests, each in short 5-10 minute segments:
- Massamba Thioye, co-chair of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Martin Weinstein, founder of Open Earth Foundation, discussed the planet’s carbon accounting needs. They offered a high-level view of the humanity-wide challenge of how to consistently measure our collective ability to meet the Paris Accord’s 2050 targets for carbon neutrality and of how blockchain technology could help.
- Kevin O'Leary, the Chairman of O'Shares ETF chairman and investor on CNBC’s “Shark Tank” show, explained how increasingly powerful ESG committees are making institutional investors more picky about the assets they funnel money into. He shared some of his ideas on how the Bitcoin community can better adjust to this new reality.
- Mark McDivitt, CEO of Context Labs and former global head of ESG at State Street, ran with the mantra of “what we can measure we can manage” to argue for sophisticated blockchain-based models involving multiple calibrations and analyses to ensure that environmental data is trustworthy enough for investors.
- Cristina Dolan, the CEO of InsideChains, spoke of her work for a forthcoming book about data science and ESG demands, in which she and co-author Diane Barrero Zalles, detail the need for standardization and how this technology might help.
- Marc Johnson, senior associate at Rocky Mountain Institute, highlighted his organization’s work using a blockchain model for tracking cumulative carbon emissions and reductions at each stage along a supply chain.
- And Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at Ernst & Young, outlined a vision for how tokenization based on trusted environmental and sustainability data can generate digital assets that economically incentivize both investors and the businesses that issue them to consistently strive for positive ESG outcomes.
Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s crosschain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.
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Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.
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Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.
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With all the multiple, differing blockchain and tokens now live on the crypto universe, it’s hard not to worry the industry is recreating the same problems of the original internet.
This episode is sponsored by PumaPay.io.
This week, co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are joined by Denelle Dixon, CEO of Stellar Development Foundation, and Peng Zhong, CEO of Tendermint.
Developers will emphasize that their particular blockchain protocol is decentralized and devoid of gatekeeping intermediaries. But how do users move assets across those chains and how can one chain validate the transactions in another? More precisely, how do you do that without once again having to rely on a trusted intermediary to act as a conduit of information or custodian of value? This is eerily reminiscent of the Web 2.0 internet structure that arose at the turn of the century, an economic model that now dominates our lives and falls far short of the early internet founders’ dreams of an open, decentralized system. As Web 2.0 consolidated around large “walled garden” platforms whose corporate owners were the sole gatekeepers to those platforms’ data, we handed immense power to a few key internet companies.
How do we avoid making the same mistake again? The answer seems to lie in interoperability protocols and cryptographic tools that essentially stitch blockchains together in a way that users of each can trust information and asset management systems managed by the others, all without a need for trusted custodians.
Much is happening in this field. Protocols such as Polkadot, founded by the Berlin-based Parity Labs outfit of early Ethereum developers Gavin Wood and Jutta Steiner, is setting itself the lofty goal of creating the next internet via the aptly named Web3 Foundation. There are blockchains focused on financial interoperability such as Ripple’s Interledger and Stellar. And there’s Cosmos, the blockchain of blockchains developed by Tendermint, which provides a suite of tools for blockchain developers to build cross-chain applications.
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750,000,000 PMA tokens are now up for grabs. By depositing today, you will become part of the next evolution of DeFi payments. Go to PumaPay.io.
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As society moves increasingly online, so do the kinds of risks that businesses face. With cybercrime growing exponentially and businesses liabilities expanding as they accumulate giant honeypots of sensitive user data, this week’s Money Reimagined explores a new approach toward risk, one fueled by a blockchain mindset.
- An analysis of the state of cybercrime with the explosion in ransomware attacks
- The new mindset based on principles of openness and decentralization
- The case for resiliency and cost-based risk tolerance over efficiency and total protection
This episode is sponsored by PumaPay.io.
Hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are joined by Dante Disparte, chief strategy officer and head of global policy at Circle whose career was previously centered on radical insurance innovation, and digital pioneer Pindar Wong, chairman of VeriFi, an internet infrastructure consulting firm.
A recent report from Cybersecurity Ventures predicted cybercrime costs are on track to total $6 trillion this year. If cybercrime were a country, it would be the third latest economy in the world.
How can a blockchain mindset reduce those costs? The Colonial Pipeline attack was a case study in the danger of centralization. The wider distribution of value, data and attack points that’s inherent to decentralized blockchain technology, as well as its collective witness feature and the power of collective, iterative improvement in open-source development hints at more effective strategies for managing such risks.
It comes down to a different framing for how to strengthen security. The classical notion of “secured versus not secured” is a prohibitive way of thinking that ignores the grey areas of “at-risk.” Is a healthcare model, with different levels and types of sickness, a more constructive mindset?
With governments poised to introduce CBDCs around the world – tempting cybercriminals with the biggest honeypots of them all - a new antifragile risk-management framework is crucial for society as these changes shape the digital future.
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750,000,000 PMA tokens are now up for grabs. By depositing today, you will become part of the next evolution of DeFi payments. Go to PumaPay.io.
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In the early days of blockchain technology, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) seemed like a far-out, unattainable idea. How could an organization, a company or a collective, ever manage itself without anyone in charge?
This episode is sponsored by PumaPay.io.
Then came the launch of The DAO, an Ethereum-based investment vehicle that subsequently collapsed due to a devastating hack, which in appropriating the acronym gave it a dirty name. It seemed real, functioning DAOs would forever be a pipe dream.
Yet, thanks largely to the success of decentralized finance (DeFi), DAOs are now here. They’re real.
In this week’s episode, we explore how developers and investors are working through the complex process of bridging the human and legal needs of the outside world with these complex, decentralized systems run by blockchains, automated smart contracts, “multisig” tokenized collateral agreements.
We were joined by two great guests, who helped us turn what might be otherwise seen as a nerdy topic into one of huge significance for the future of investing, innovation and economic development:
Rune Christensen, chief executive officer of the Maker Foundation, which founded MakerDAO, the first truly successful DeFi DAO on the Ethereum blockchain, which generates the algorithmic stablecoin, dai.
Ian Lee, managing director of IDEO Co-Lab Ventures and a co-founder of Syndicate, which enables groups of investors to fund DeFi projects and other ventures using DAOs and DAO-like structures.
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750,000,000 PMA tokens are now up for grabs. By depositing today, you will become part of the next evolution of DeFi payments. Go to PumaPay.io.
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DeFi, as the world of decentralized finance is known, is growing up.
This episode is sponsored by PumaPay.io.
Venture money is being dedicated to the space, decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity protocols are being upgraded to add flexibility, and so-called layer 2 solutions are being deployed to help scale this vibrant new, ever-evolving decentralized financial system while preserving decentralization. The community has also just successfully gone through a stress test in the form of a sharp decline in crypto prices, which produced none of the systemic risk fallout that some people had hypothesized would arise at such times for DiFi collateral contracts.
So, where does this strange new world of finance go from here? In part, that question is about governance and regulation. How will the decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that run the DeFi ecosystem’s various interoperable protocols connect the choices of its human investors with the decentralized, pseudonymity-dependent, on-chain consensus mechanisms on which these smart contracts depend? And what, if anything, should or could external government regulators and internal self-regulators do to protect people if the machines that run it all go bad?
For insights into how this fascinating new environment is shaping up, listen in while we chat to Rebecca Rettig, general counsel of Aave, and Marc Boiron, general counsel at decentralized exchange dYdX, about all of the above.
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750,000,000 PMA tokens are now up for grabs. By depositing today, you will become part of the next evolution of DeFi payments. Go to PumaPay.io.
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Central bank digital currencies have evolved from a loosely formed concept to tangible, real-live projects and an array of models have emerged.
This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.
Michael Casey and Sheila Warren host a live CBDC edition of their “Money Reimagined” podcast at Consensus 2021. In this program, they discuss the further development and future direction of CBDCs with Christian Catalini, the chief economist of the Diem Association, and Benedicte Nolens, head of the Bank of International Settlements’ Innovation Hub in Hong Kong.
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The story of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is a tragic reminder of the lasting impact of colonial injustice and how it extends into modern finance.
This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.
It’s why this episode, on the potential for blockchain technology and digital currencies to empower people in such places, begins with a powerful monologue by Sheila about the shameful, century-long legacy of a slavery-era debt. That debt, imposed by France in punishment of Haiti’s citizens for freeing themselves from their slave masters in a rebellion that founded their independence in 1805, later became a U.S.-owned asset serviced by a bank that would become Citibank. In that sense, this long-standing problem is directly related to the issue of Wall Street’s power and dominance in the age of dollar hegemony, a power that is challenged, in theory, by cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
We learn from guest Jerry Tardieu, a Haitian author, entrepreneur, and politician who represents Petion-ville in the Chamber of Deputies, of how that debt legacy and the dependence on aid that came with it, has challenged Haiti’s capacity to strike its own economic path. He calls for technologies and policies that boost access to investment capital rather than aid.
We also hear from Daniele Jean-Pierre, the co-founder and COO of Zimbali networks, which delivers smart ledger solutions for the decentralized economy, on the kinds of solutions that entrepreneurs like her are developing to meet that call to action.
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With CoinDesk’s Consensus just a week away, we decided that this week’s Money Reimagined episode should focus on the big macro and geopolitical themes that will be its hallmark.
This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.
Highlights of that landmark event include Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard’s perspective on the future of money, Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio’s thesis on the end of the dollar’s dominance and a discussion/debate on the inflation outlook featuring former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal and CoinDesk’s Noelle Acheson. Attendees will be asked to contemplate where the global economy is headed in an age of monetary transformation and what that means for the power structures of the world as we know it.
As a prelude, we invited Bruno Macaes, a Portuguese politician, author and influential thinker on geopolitical trends, and Tomicah Tillemann, the Director of the Digital Impact and Governance Initiative at the New America think tank, to give us their take on these matters.
Some of the scenarios we discussed are challenging. They paint a picture of mass disruption of the global economic order. But both our guests had a somewhat contrarian take to a common view, held by many observers of geopolitical trends, that forces of technological change and economic stress will conspire to bring to an end to the era of U.S. financial, economic and political hegemony.
In different ways, Macaes and Tillemann both argued that the U.S., if it plays its cards right, could turn this current moment of economic uncertainty to its advantage and sustain leadership of the global economy. To do so, they said, it must embrace the principles of open systems and open society that lie at the heart of the crypto ethos – and which, in theory at least, are ingrained in what are widely considered “American values.”
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If you were to describe what crypto represents in its entirety, either to the insiders who are obsessed with it or to the “normies” looking on with wonder from the outside, you might focus on technical issues related to immutability, censorship resistance, smart contracts, decentralized exchanges and so forth. Or you might use the language of finance and “asset classes” to talk about bitcoin as “digital gold” or ether as a commodity token that runs a decentralized network.
This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.
But to capture the full picture, you’d also need to deal with all the strange, sometimes obscure, sometimes crude, occasionally funny memes that constantly course through Twitter and work their way into the crypto lexicon.
That’s important, not only because memes are integral to the crypto experience on their own, but because they are also driving some of the shifting ideas around money and finance generally. This, after all, is the era of SPACs, “stonks” and meme shares that rise because Reddit groups like WallStreetBets manage to bring the power and collective will of the mob to markets.
In many respects, that traditional world of finance is only catching up with crypto. Dogecoin, the ultimate meme token, might be hitting headlines now with its latest spectacular price rally as it is following on the heels of the WallStreetBets GameStop phenomenon. But dogecoin really precedes it, having been around since December 2013. You could argue that dogecoin is the original stonk.
This episode makes the case that if you’re going to try to understand how money is being reimagined in the new era, you need to go beyond the technology and the market dynamics and address the confusing cacophony of memes that drive the narratives around crypto.
To do that we were joined by two people who’ve inserted themselves into this grand, collective storytelling exercise with more influence than almost anyone. We talk to Nathaniel Whittemore, host of CoinDesk’s “Breakdown” podcast, and Coin Center’s Neeraj Agrawal, to discuss the importance of all this to both the outside world and the strange but fascinating subculture that has formed around the crypto community.
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InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io.
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In what has become a de facto world tour of crypto hot spots, this week “Money Reimagined” is headed to Nigeria.
This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.
We talked to two Nigerian entrepreneurs – Yele Bademosi, the CEO of payments app Bundle Africa, and Adia Sowho, a venture builder and operator – about the burgeoning crypto innovation ecosystem in their country.
Among this entertaining pair’s many insights was the idea the Nigerian Central Bank’s February order that banks shut down crypto companies’ access ended up being a positive for the industry. It spurred even more innovation in the space, inspiring local developers to dream up interesting new decentralized solutions for getting around the banking sector’s gatekeepers.
The idea dovetails with some we’ve heard from other guests – from Democracy Earth’s Santiago Siri, for example, who spoke of how the startup scene in his native Argentina is shaped and driven by the failure of the existing financial system and the efforts by authorities there to constrain people’s financial freedom.
It shows how the crypto world has fostered a new breed of developer-entrepreneur, one who no longer wants to work to change the existing system but is inspired to build entire new alternatives to it.
We also learned from Bademosi and Sowho that the narratives the crypto community in the industrialized world tend to embrace about the technology’s value in the developing world are often misplaced. It’s convenient for people in the U.S. to talk up the idea that Nigerian activists were using bitcoin during the anti-government protests last year or that it is being used widely as a remittance and payments vehicle. But our guests point out those use cases aren’t as widespread as believed and that, much like in the U.S, most Nigerians are for now buying bitcoin as a store of value.
On the other hand, they tell us Nigeria specifically – and Africa generally – is a hotbed of innovation in DeFi. And why not? The opportunities for experimentation and creativity for decentralized finance are arguably much greater in places where the existing financial system is underdeveloped.
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With all the gyrations in crypto markets, it is easy to lose sight of why this technology has drawn so many passionate believers. In this week’s episode we go straight to that point by diving into the theme of human rights and the role that bitcoin can play as a medium for saving and spending that is free from the confiscatory powers of government – including those of authoritarian regimes.
This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.
Throughout its life, communities of activists all around the world have taken to bitcoin as a tool of empowerment. Sometimes it’s because they live in places where the local currency is constantly being debased by profligate governments. Sometimes it’s because they are at risk of having property seized by the regime. Sometimes it’s because they need a way to fund dissidents’ activities.
To explore all this, we speak to the Human Rights Foundation’s outspoken chief strategy officer, Alex Gladstein, on how he, a career human rights campaigner, found his way into the weird world of bitcoin. We also have the pleasure of talking to an activist in Sudan, a person who goes by Mo and the podcaster pseudonym of @SudanHODL.
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InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io.
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This week’s Money Reimagined episode was recorded at the ideal moment to take stock of the biggest development in the crypto space this year: Coinbase’s public listing on the Nasdaq exchange. The show was recorded on Wednesday, the day of the listing, just after 4 pm, the time at which U.S. stock markets closed.
So, with the help of Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Vigna (who was Michael’s co-author for both The Age of Currency and The Truth Machine) and of CoinDesk Director of Research Noelle Acheson, we broke down the day’s action, the history of what brought us to this point from when Coinbase was first launched in 2012, and what this means for the future: for Coinbase, for the crypto community, for Wall Street, and for Main Street,
In tying itself to the corporate “suits,” is this disruptive firm from the crypto universe going to shake up the Wall Street establishment from within, or will those older institutions constrain it?
What does the sudden scramble up the crypto learning curve look like for all those institutional investors who now feel they need to own – and therefore understand -- this stock and the weird new decentralized financial industry it services?
Who’s the next Coinbase? And what does the inevitable influx of investment in search of that “new new thing” do to the funding of new projects and new ideas among startups that may end up supplanting Coinbase and eventually rendering it obsolete?
We address these and many more in this episode.
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Without letters of credit, bills of lading, shipping documents and trillions of dollars in global goods trade would grind to a halt. (And you thought our dependency on the Suez Canal was a problem!)
This episode is sponsored by Interpop.io
But the world’s system of trade finance, a highly complex setup involving banks, insurers, shipping companies, data providers and all manner of intermediaries, is far from ideal.
There is massive fraud – check the New York Times’ account of the recent Greensill Capital collapse for – and severe inequity in terms of who gets favorable borrowing terms and who doesn’t. Without access to the trusted data needed to prove their creditworthiness, millions of small-and-medium enterprises are unable to obtain credit to cover the risks associated with exporting their goods. So they either run the risk of non-payment or simply cannot participate in the global economy.
As a measure of that inequity, Sheila noted in her monologue to this week’s Money Reimagined episode – in which we talk to two blockchain pioneers trying to fix the trade finance industries many problems – that there’s currently a $1.5 trillion global trade financing gap. But then in his first comments, Tallyx CEO Aditya Menon offered an alternative analysis of how much of the goods trade goes unfinanced and came up with a $5 trillion number. That’s about half of the global trade in goods.
Can blockchains and tokenization address these inequities?
As you’ll hear from Menon, as well as from Skuchain co-founder Rebecca Liao, the answers lie in figuring out how to incentivize all participants – the exporters, importers, shippers and financiers – to share data in a way that unlocks funding faster.
Skuchain is focused on making the information richer and more reliable along the supply chain. Tallyx is figuring out how to turn the contractual information such as invoices into tokens of value that can be traded in ways that allow smaller suppliers to monetize their legitimate receivables.
The problems they are trying to solve aren’t easy. But that’s what makes their work so compelling.
Blockchain projects like Skuchain and Tallyx offer a healthy reminder that beyond the razzamatazz of crypto markets and celebrity non-fungible tokens, meaningful impact is also possible if you work hard at the core problems faced by real-world entities.
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Few countries have as deep and long-lasting a history of financial crises as Argentina.
Given how otherwise blessed it is with natural and human resources, Argentina is Exhibit A in the argument that repeated monetary mismanagement will do lasting harm to long-term prosperity. A century of such crises, which has bred profound mistrust of the institutions of government among Argentines, took their country from being the seventh-richest nation on earth to the 75th.
Now, with the advent of cryptocurrencies and blockchains, some finally a way out of this trap of mistrust. It’s no coincidence that Argentina has a relatively high level of bitcoin adoption nor that it has contributed a disproportionately high number of successful developers to the global crypto community.
But is crypto the answer, or should Argentines continue to work within the system to get the accountable government they deserve?
We explore that question, along with a deep dive into just what it is that explains Argentina’s uniquely dysfunctional economic experience, in his week’s edition of “Money Reimagined.” We’re joined by Lucas Llach, a professor of economics at Torcuato di Tella University in Buenos Aires, and Santiago Siri, the founder of Democracy Earth, a radical, blockchain-based solution for democracy inspired his struggles to reform government in his native Argentina.
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An insider's look at how Bitcoin is making renewable energy sustainable featuring industry veterans Meltem Demirors and Harry Sudock.
As big banks, publicly traded corporations and some of the biggest names in finance become increasingly bullish on Bitcoin’s prospects, only a few objections really remain. These days on Wall Street it’s all about responsible investing as seen through the lens of “Environmental, Social and Governance,” (better known as ESG). On this episode of CoinDesk’s “Money Reimagined,” we speak with two of the top minds building out bitcoin mining in the U.S. for an insiders look at the real story on energy, money and sustainability. In this episode we’ll speak with Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer of CoinShares, and Harry Sudock, vice president of Strategy at GRIID.
To set the stage, earlier this week on CoinDesk TV, fund manager and “Shark Tank” co-host Kevin O’Leary said Wall Street has to satisfy sustainability reporting requirements before it can buy wholesale into bitcoin. He estimated that only 10% of institutions that wanted to buy had bought in, partly because of climate concerns.
He continued, “All of these new providence concerns, which were not on anybody’s mind when crypto was simply the purvey of the hedge fund or the retail investor. Now it has to have a new standard. Where did it come from? How was it mined? Was it mined sustainably? How do I know I’m not supporting mining in a country where human rights are abused like China? All of these issues are at the fore for institutional clients.”
These are valid questions, but they’re certainly not new, much less unanswered. Demirors described the problem as “two facts and two fallacies,” saying:
“Fact #1 - Bitcoin mining is highly energy intensive. That is a fact. Bitcoin is the only network that I know of that documents its energy use and is extremely transparent about it, which I think makes Bitcoin a very easy target. It’s impossible for you to calculate how much energy the banking industry uses, how much energy the U.S. military uses. Most industries and sectors are very opaque about their energy usage. Bitcoin is not.
Fact #2 - A majority of bitcoin miners are located in China. That is still a fact, we are working on changing that but it is a fact.
From those two facts, some logical fallacies follow:
Fallacy #1 - The logic then goes: Bitcoin miners in China are using dirty, coal-based power. That’s actually false and we have proven that to be false through our bitcoin mining research report. We were the first firm in the industry to do this research. We spoke to all of the miners first-hand and did a bottoms-up calculation where we found that 77% of all bitcoin mining done in China was done with renewable energy that would otherwise not be utilized. So that’s fallacy number one.
Fallacy #2 is that bitcoin mining has an extreme carbon footprint. And that is something that’s also provably false, and I think an area that people who care about the bitcoin network are working to provide more data to make that extremely transparent.
And then, the last logical, sort of “transitive property sum” that comes out of those four statements… Two facts, two idealogical fallacies is that “Bitcoin is bad,” which is a moral judgment.”
Sudock, meanwhile, discussed his experience as a profit-oriented bitcoin miner who was sucked into environmentally responsible mining out of sheer necessity.
“We didn’t enter this industry with an eye towards becoming a renewable operator. We didn’t think that that was sort of our ‘edge,’ but what we quickly found through conversations with everybody from very very large, federal energy producers in the U.S. to very small hydro dams that are run by Mom and Pops who can’t afford upgrades to their turbines, is that everybody is looking for revenue enhancement strategies that will support the growth and resilience of the energy that they’re producing. And the need for those enhancement strategies are particularly acute when you start to look at renewable generation. Those conversations at this point for us are inbound. I spend less time reaching out to energy producers than energy producers spend reaching out to me. And that’s a huge change.”
All of this and more in this week’s episode of CoinDesk’s “Money Reimagined.”
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At the end of a high-energy week in the burgeoning digital art world, “Money Reimagined” brings you the third and (for now) final edition of our NFT series.
In between recording this episode and publishing it two days later, a non-fungible token attached to a piece of digital art sold for a whopping $69.3 million. The sale, orchestrated by Christie’s, turned the digital creator known as Beeple into the third-highest paid living artist. It also represented a high point in the media attention now swirling around this new, crypto-based technology.
So, it’s appropriate we end on a note that grounds things in the reality of the technology and its potential to transform the creator economy generally, rather than being caught up in the celebrity story and media sensations. To do so, we talk with Roham Gharegozlou, the CEO and founder of Dapper Labs, the startup that in many respects is responsible for kicking off the entire NFT phenomenon.
We talk about the early days when Dapper created the ERC-721 standard on Ethereum and launched the popular CryptoKitties program. We talk about why the team made the decision to build its own blockchain, known as Flow, and to migrate the business there away from Ethereum. And we talk about where this rapidly evolving industry, with its competing platforms and wild debates over rights and opportunities, is going.
Join us for the conversation.
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In this week’s “Money Reimagined” podcast episode, we take the discussion around central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) down from the high-level geopolitical themes we’ve addressed previously and into what the technology can do for people at the grassroots level.
To do so, Sheila Warren and I talked to Serey Chea, director general at National Bank of Cambodia, and Makoto Takemiya, co-CEO of Tokyo-based blockchain technology provider Soramitsu, about Cambodia’s new “Bakong” central bank digital currency and payments system.
They provide a thought-provoking look at how small economies can use CBDCs to leapfrog their otherwise underdeveloped financial systems into something far more advanced.
With the financial world obsessing about China’s launch of its new digital yuan and the competitive threat that poses to the U.S, which is now accelerating its work on a digital dollar, this is a reminder that there is real potential to do good with this technology in the realm of financial inclusion.
However, there are real challenges – the impact on the banking system, privacy and security, to name a few. We address all of those and explore where this is going in this far-reaching conversation.
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This week on Money Reimagined, we bring you part two in our series on non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, the crypto-based digital scarcity solution that’s taking the art and entertainment worlds by storm.
After last week tackling the stage-setting theme of how access to information determines value in the art world and who gets to set it, this week we go to the thin of the wedge and look at real-world use cases where NFTs are poised to blow up that centuries-old power dynamic.
To do that we talk to two trailblazers in the exploding field of Black digital art: South African artist Lethabo Huma and NFT collector Cuy Sheffield, who also happens to be the head of crypto at Visa.
Can this technology break open the 'Old Boys Club' of the art world?
Can contemporary artists use the new contractual terms behind NFTs and the power of social media to more directly reach buyers and build a reputation?
And how might it enable creative collaboration, not only between artists but also between artists and a new breed of algorithmic bots behind a brand new genre known as “generative art?”
We discuss this and more in this week’s episode. At a time when everyone from the NBA to Mark Cuban to Gary Vaynerchuck is diving into NFT mania, you can’t afford to miss this one.
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With much of the world focused on bitcoin and ether as prices breach new all-time high after all-time high, the “Money Reimagined” crew embarks on a more nuanced journey, one that eschews world-changing networks for an art-changing renaissance that's been long in the making. We're talking, of course, about the nonfungible token (NFT) movement that has engulfed the world of crypto collectibles. With big brands like Christie’s auction house and the National Basketball Association getting involved and some tokens already selling for six-figure sums, the question isn't if NFTs will force a very old industry to adopt some very new practices, it's when.
On today's episode of CoinDesk's “Money Reimagined,” Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are joined by Nanne Dekking, CEO of Artory and formerly the top salesman at Sotheby's.
Founded in 2016, Artory is creating the first standardized data collection solution by the art world, for the art world. In his former position at Sotheby’s New York, Dekking was vice chairman and the worldwide head of Private Sales. His close relationships with collectors and museums were integral to the continued growth of private sales at Sotheby’s. Prior to joining Sotheby’s, Nanne was vice president of Wildenstein & Co. He advised individuals, museums and foundations on the formation and development of their collections. From 1996-2001 Nanne was the founder and principal of Nanne Dekking Fine Arts, an art consultancy firm and gallery in New York.
"Which scholar do I trust? Who in the art market do I trust?" Dekking said. "They don’t want to trust anyone."
In this wide-ranging introduction to NFTs, collectibles and the traditional art market, the discussion ranges from Sheila Warren's Cryptokitty genealogy to the challenges of selling paintings by the old masters in litigious modern markets, plus a whole lot more.
“There are so many charitable things you can do with all this technology but ultimately you want the market to understand the commercial benefits of it. Then it goes fast. The moment you’re in the realm of charity, it’s like ‘this is such a nice idea’ but in a way you’re dead in the water already if the market just thinks this is only nice for a charitable reason," said Nanne Dekking, CEO of Artory and formerly the top salesman at Sotheby's. "As long as the market believes opaqueness will help [its] business model, which it doesn’t any more, it’s a very old-fashioned idea… The moment Art-Net came up, the moment Google existed … it’s all about this crazy idea that you as a human being are so important in the sales process to an artwork. I mean, you’re not."
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This week’s Money Reimagined dives into the increasingly urgently needed Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. What is it and why does it matter?
We talk with Danny Ryan, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. He has become a key player in the complicated “herding the cats” task of “herding the cats” of getting thousands of different stakeholders in this vibrant decentralized community aligned enough to undertake the massive 2.0 transition with sufficient cohesion.
With Danny’s help we break the whole thing down in a way that’s accessible to people beyond the developer community: Proof-of-stake consensus, sharding, Layer 2, and how decision-making and development happens in this free-wheeling open-source environment.
We put it all in the context of a giant boom for the Ethereum ecosystem, as money pours into red-hot decentralized finance (DeFi), as a mania for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) plays out, and as ether hits new all-time highs as large institutions gain exposure via new CME futures. All this is bringing into stark relief the urgent need to advance the system’s scalability as congestion on the network is driving up transactions costs, or “gas fees” to unsustainable levels.
It’s a timely episode, in other words. Have a listen.
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There’s a reason the Gamestop/WallStreetBets drama of the past two weeks got so much attention. It’s because it speaks forcefully to the inequities and systemic problems in both our financial markets and the internet economy and how they’ve shaped our politics and social tensions.
So, in true Money Reimagined form, we wanted to have a super high-level discussion about what all this means for the future of money and society. And for that we called on someone who is a master at drawing big-picture narratives around such issues: Demetri Kofinas, the host of the popular Hidden Forces podcast.
Demetri Kofinas is an insatiably curious media entrepreneur and financial expert. His mission is to make the connections that help you see the bigger picture, empowering you to make smarter investing decisions.
He also hosts the Hidden Forces podcast, where he gives his listeners an edge by using his critical thinking approach to challenge the consensus narratives structuring our world .
You can follow him on Twitter at @kofinas, check out his podcast at hiddenforces.io, and sign-up for more in depth content and analysis at Patreon.com/hiddenforces.
Find Michael Casey on Twitter or Clubhouse (@mikejcasey)
Find Sheila Warren on Twitter or Clubhouse (@sheilaw)
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For this episode, we travel, metaphorically, to a town in the Swiss Alps that’s for the first time in 50 years experiencing some peace and quiet in January.
This week was the World Economic Forum’s “Davos Agenda,” a conference filled with the usual roster of high-powered speakers but conducted entirely virtually, over Zoom, instead of in Davos. So, as Sheila took time out from helping run that agenda, we invited her colleague Adrian Monck, a long-time WEF managing director, to reflect on the forum’s past and future and how something as anti-establishment as cryptocurrency and blockchain is being integrated into its work.
It might come as a shock to the rebellious strain that’s prominent in the crypto community, but its world and that of the WEF have some important similarities. Both must grapple with the core problem of governance in a decentralized environment, with the difficulty of solving problems that serve the interests of the whole when there’s no single party in charge. Both of them grapple with the problem of consensus.
As Adrian explains, the WEF tries to resolve this by using its unparalleled convening power. It brings together disparate decision-makers from governments, businesses and civil society so they can find common ground on how to address the world’s many urgent needs.
At times, that convening exercise has involved inviting radical newcomers, such as the internet tech community, into the tent. In this wide-ranging discussion, which partly delves into Sheila’s groundbreaking work introducing blockchain ideas to the WEF, we dive into the current challenge for this evolving process: how to bring the crypto disruptors inside.
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As the Biden Administration gets underway, what can we expect for cryptocurrency technologies alongside an ascendent bitcoin?
One day into the new President’s tenure we’ve brought in Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association and Amy Davine Kim, Chief Policy Officer at the Chamber of Digital Commerce. In this episode we'll take a look into the regulatory future as we explore the relationships, lobbying and policymaking efforts within Washington.
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On this episode of Money Reimagined the discussion comes home for an insiders look at how new, disruptive technology and government interact. For this discussion, hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren of the World Economic Forum are joined by Marvin Ammori, best known for his work on network neutrality and Internet freedom issues. Rounding out the panel is Christopher Giancarlo, former CFTC chairman and founding principal of the Digital Dollar Foundation.
"My background is really 20 years of working on the internet. And I remember in the early days of the internet." said Marvin Ammori, "you know, one kind of piece of deja vu is what jumped out to everyone. The internet began with all the bad stuff. Congress couldn't believe there was porn on the internet. We had to protect the children from the number one thing that people noticed on the internet.
And in fact, the first major case about the internet, had the Supreme Court upheld Congress's action, pretty much every website would have needed to get your credit card number and verify you're 18 to go on. The internet would have been for adults only."
Marvin continued, "The entire trajectory of the internet would have been different, but luckily the Supreme Court pushed back on congressional action under the First Amendment. But the first impulse of congress 20 years ago with the internet was 'let's cripple this thing.' [...] We've seen all the tremendous benefits. [T]hings we could have never imagined back then. Now when it comes to cryptocurrency we see something similar."
"The first wave of the Internet was an internet of information. And interestingly, it emerged into a federal regulatory structure that was really a pretty light zone because of our First Amendment protections of freedom of speech," said former CFTC chair Christopher Giancarlo. "So the internet, actually, in the first case, it didn't face a lot of opposition, I think, Marvin is absolutely right. There was certainly calls in Congress for banning because of pornography, but at the end of the day, the Democrat White House of President Clinton, the Republican Congress under Newt Gingrich came up with the 'first do no harm approach.'
And the internet flourished and a lot of lessons learned were 'don't ask permission, seek forgiveness', 'keep going until you break something.' And the first internet wave, the wave of information flourished pretty successfully.
We're now in a new construct, where in fact what we're talking about, as an internet of 'things of value', whoa... Well, it's a very different construct. We have at least three federal bank regulators regulating holdings of people's things of value, market regulators in Washington. And then in every state level.
And so this new wave of the internet is not running into a regulatory light zone. It's actually running into a regulatory heavy 'no go zone.' And we've seen the clash. I mean, just look at the ICO challenge a few years ago. That was a statement by one regulator that they were not conceding ground in this new internet of value. [... It's] a product of our past and our approaches and our constitutional liberties, but also these new technologies, new waves, the internet bring new challenges to old constructs that we haven't often been successful in working through."
On Dec. 18, the U.S. Treasury published a proposal to expand the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s requirements for identity monitoring and reporting by crypto exchanges. Under these proposed new rules, that powerful agency, known as FinCEN, would require exchanges to collect names and home addresses from the owners of private, self-custodied digital wallets that receive more than $3,000 in cryptocurrencies daily and to file special currency transaction reports about any wallet that receives more than $10,000 a day.
The announcement prompted an outpouring of criticism from the crypto community and among digital rights activists. Many saw it as an attack on privacy. As of this recording, more than 7,500 comments have been posted to FinCEN’s site. That constitutes more than two thirds of all public comments received by the agency for various rules and proposals dating back to 2008.
Then, on Monday last week, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which sets and coordinates federal banking rules, offered a rule change that was much more favorably received among the crypto community.
The OCC said banks could now use stablecoins to conduct payments and other activities, including stablecoin tokens issued on public blockchains such as Ethereum. It prompted some breathless commentary on how integrating the old world of banking with the new world of decentralized finance paves the way to a new global financial system of programmable money.
To many this seemed like a weird good cop/bad cop routine out of Washington. Is the Administration pro- or anti-crypto?
But to Michael Casey, there’s much more coordination here than meets the eye.
There’s a common theme with respect to how both rules fit into geopolitical tensions that digital currency technology is stirring up. We’ll go into that in this week’s episode, which is why one of our guests today is Christopher Giancarlo, the former Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission who is now senior counsel at Willkie Farr & Gallagher and, among other roles, founding principal of the Digital Dollar Foundation. As someone who knows the ropes in Washington and is thinking hard about how the U.S. should prepare for a world of digital currencies, his insights will be invaluable.
The other question this throws up is: how do we forge a more constructive relationship between the crypto community and policymakers, not just in the U.S. but in the global setting in which this technology exists?
For that we’ve brought in Marvin Ammori, the chief legal officer for the decentralized exchange protocol, Uniswap. Not only does that role give Marvin a solid foot in the crypto community’s regulatory concerns, but we think his past influential work for the internet tech industry developing a common framework for net neutrality laws comes with real lessons on how to do these things right. And as an influential activist for digital civil rights, the questions here of privacy and digital autonomy are right in his wheelhouse.
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Join Michael Casey and Sheila Warren as they speak with Matthew Davie the Chief Strategy Officer of Kiva and Alpen Sheth Senior Technologist of Blockchain at Mercy Corps. It's Finally 2021, the year we all were promised. Even though the calendar has turned, the world is still on a wild ride. So today we go back to the fundamentals.
They call it the charitable-industrial complex: a system where money for development, for humanitarian needs, and for improving the lives of billions is controlled through a top-down process, run by U.S. charities and shaped by U.S. tax rules and regulations.
The first Money Reimagined podcast episode of 2021 dives into the problems this creates. Can we get away from this top-down, centralized system to build a bottom-up model that empowers the people charities are trying to help? And will the decentralizing power of crypto and blockchain technology play a meaningful role?
In this episode we dig into the "why" of this empowering new technology. What's the point? And more importantly, who is it for?
“Reimagining money isn’t about money at all but more about the complexity of the systems surrounding it. [...]The exciting part about Crypto is that it has the potential to be a partial fix for the problems of exclusion plaguing our financial system” said Sheila Warren.
According to Matthew Davie, “There is a gap between the informal sector and the formal sector, and you can’t build a bridge without figuring out how to solve that problem. So, we came at this from the system side saying we need verifiable identity and how do we do that?”
“What we find is that the unbanked are just too broad of a category to comprehend so it has to be broken down. There [are] substantial gender inequalit[ies]. Whether its device ownership, around participation in the economy, around disasters... People are just stuck underneath layers and layers of intermediaries to just do basic activities” said Alpen Sheth
About our guests:
Matthew Davie @KIVA focuses on long term strategic initiatives to help drive systemic financial inclusion for the world’s most venerable populations. He oversees corporate strategy, emerging technology development, and policy and regulatory engagements.
Alpen Sheth, PhD, is Senior Technologist, Blockchain, at Mercy Corps. a blockchain advisor for companies in the insurance, identity, and energy sectors. Previously, he co-founded the Economic Space Agency, a blockchain R&D startup, and later became the Head of Product at etherisc.com, an insurtech company, creating smart-contract based applications in several different countries
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Join Michael Casey and Sheila Warren as they speak with tech ethnographer Tricia Wang and metaMe CEO Dele Atanda, as they dig into social media privacy and the value of personal data.
For the first time since the “Internet 2.0” era began at the turn of the millennium, the dominant social media, search and e-commerce platforms are facing existential challenges. The disruption could come from legal efforts as anti-monopoly lawsuits evolve in both the U.S. and Europe. Or it could come via some nascent alternatives to the platforms’ centralized model, including from blockchain-inspired startups.
Wang, who joined us on this week’s episode of the “Money Reimagined” podcast, says these responses won’t lead to a meaningful alternative until we gain a better appreciation of the role data plays in our internet interactions. Data, she says, “is not just information. Data is relationships.”
The algorithms of Google, Facebook, Amazon and others place the greatest value not in static, simple information points like your name, address and income, but data that reveals your relationships with other people. That matters, Wang says, because the story of those connections is equally important to humans because it is our connections to others that describe who we are.
The imbalance is not just that ad dollars flow to Facebook and Google rather than to the users who generate the content and build the audiences the platforms and their advertisers monetize. It’s that, as detailed in Shoshana Zuboff’s “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”, we are trapped in an ever-tightening feedback loop in which these companies use our data to modify our behavior. There’s a scary Matrix-like aspect to all this.
It’s why the other guest on this week’s podcast, metaMe CEO Dele Atanda, views his company’s work building a more decentralized, blockchain-powered data marketplace as an exercise in protecting people’s human rights. Creating that marketplace and figuring out a meaningful expression of the value of people’s data is how we will ultimately restore agency over our digital lives, he says.
“We need to create a unit of account that we can measure – not just on the basis of size [as bytes] but on the basis of sensitivity, identifiability. These issues are central to how this information can be used to help or harm us,” he said.
Also important, Atanda says, is the governance structure of the database storing the information, which speaks to the role to be played by blockchain. The more “permissionless” and decentralized the architecture behind the data marketplace, the more confident individuals can be that the rights to their data are protected.
All of this seems pertinent in a week in which society was once again found vulnerable to data failures at centralized systems.
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Raoul Pal, CEO of RealVision and influential global macro investor, found himself in the middle of this fight recently after he tweeted to bitcoiners that KYC is in their interest because it will bring institutional money into the asset and boost its value. As someone with an account bearing the name SexyWebCamPro100x noted in one of more than 700 replies to that remark, the tweet begged for a meme of someone kicking a hornet’s nest.
Pal is an influential thinker about Bitcoin’s place in the future financial system. So we invited him onto this week’s Money Reimagined podcast to discuss his brawl with Crypto Twitter. For balance, we also invited CoinDesk columnist Jill Carlson, who, among other roles, is a founder of the Open Money Initiative, which focuses on boosting financial access and economic freedom for underserved communities.
Pal offered a nuanced explanation of his position. He said while his point was partly about allowing both bitcoin HODLers and institutions to “get rich,” it was also that for the Bitcoin system to be a transformative force it needs the “network effect” of more money coming into the space, which in turn requires institution-friendly regulation.
“For people to realize their ambitions that it’s a stateless money … for it to be adopted by people who live within the confines of a sovereign state, unfortunately it will have to be regulated and there’s almost nothing we can do about it,” Pal said.
Some might see a contradiction: for Bitcoin to realize its power as a “stateless” network, the state must exercise more control over it. But Pal’s point is about sequencing. He says we need to first go through a process of official accommodation within the existing system to advance Bitcoin’s journey along “Metcalfe’s Law.” Once it becomes a ubiquitous network, then it is in a position to properly challenge that system.
Indeed, as Carlson pointed out, the positive thing, for those who believe in Bitcoin’s disruptive potential, is that “you’re not going to implement KYC and AML at the protocol level.” Since “there is nothing inherent to Bitcoin that can be regulated, enforced or controlled in that way,“ it can at that level always resist official coercion.
But she also worried that the ever-growing encroachment of compliance requirements on applications built on top of that protocol impedes access to it among marginalized and financially excluded people.
Carlson cited how LocalBitcoins, a peer-to-peer exchange network that was once a “gateway to economic freedom” in places that impose capital controls and other forms of monetary repression, has “increasingly come under scrutiny and has to institute more and more KYC and AML standards and protocols. She added, “That’s problematic where we are talking about people who don’t have any identity or are unbanked and are refugees and so forth.”
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Join Michael Casey & Sheila Warren as they speak with Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO of AZA Finance and Sebastian Serrano, CEO of Ripio for a discussion on the past, present and future of bitcoin and stablecoins in Africa and South America.
Bitcoin, Stablecoins and International Adoption
This week’s accompanying Money Reimagined podcast episode looks at the adoption of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins in emerging markets, which over the past year has seen real signs of life. Is this finally the moment to realize one of the great hopes of this technology: to enable financial empowerment in developing countries where traditional finance is constrained?
To explore that question, my co-host Sheila Warren and I are joined by Elizabeth Rossiello, the founder and CEO of AZA, which has for seven years been developing digital payment solutions in African markets, and Sebastian Serrano, the founder and CEO of Ripio, which has been doing similar work in Latin America for more or less the same amount of time.
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In the lore of digital disruption, Eastman Kodak Co.'s downfall is particularly momentous.
Kodak was once one of the world's most powerful companies. But it failed to act on digital cameras and online photo sharing, despite seeing the trends years before. (Kodak engineer Steve Sasson created the first digital camera in 1975.)
It's an apt story to remember now as the digital money revolution rolls ahead at a time of momentous political transition.
On this episode of CoinDesk's Money Reimagined, join Jen Zhu Scott, Executive Chairman of The Commons Project, Tanvi Ratna, CEO of Policy 4.0, along with hosts Michael J. Casey and Sheila Warren of the World Economic Forum for this deep-dive into the potential of, and thought behind China's forthcoming DCEP, better known as the digital yuan.
With DCEP, China’s supply chains will become hyper-efficient, giving it a big advantage over other countries’ production sectors. And as those models extend into China’s international One Belt One Road initiative, foreign dependency on its production processes could grow, giving Beijing geopolitical clout.
Out of this, China will forge financial autonomy. Its digital currency will eventually be interoperable with other tokens and blockchains, allowing its businesses and their foreign trading partners to move money across borders without using dollars as an intermediary. They’ll bypass New York, in other words.
Solution: Open Money
This won’t happen overnight. But the effect on confidence in the U.S. could arise within the next four years.
How should Washington react? Christopher Giancarlo, former CFTC chairman and the founder of the Digital Dollar Foundation, is pushing for a digital dollar that would integrate constitutionally enshrined privacy protections, making it more appealing than the digital yuan, which many fear will become a Beijing surveillance tool.
But will people truly trust the U.S. not to monitor digital dollar transactions? After all, as Jennifer Zhu Scott, chair of the Commons Project, noted in this week’s Money Reimagined podcast, global finance is already subject to a comprehensive U.S.-led system of surveillance.
So, while we’re right to worry about a Chinese “panopticon” ingesting people’s identifying information, that’s not the data threat the U.S. can or should compete with. In the same podcast episode, Policy 4.0 CEO Tanvi Ratna said the bigger issue is how troves of DCEP-generated anonymized data will enable Chinese businesses to extract huge efficiencies and unlock innovation across decentralized economic systems.
There may be a way for the U.S. to compete here. But it will require a radical, disruptive solution. This is an episode you won't want to miss.
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In this episode of our Money Reimagined podcast, Sheila Warren and Michael Casey speak with two outside-the-box thinkers on their ideas for improving governance.
Quadratic Voting and Open Auctions
One of our guests was Glen Weyl, the political economist and Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, who co-authored the book “Radical Markets” with University of Chicago Law School professor Eric Posner. We chose to focus on just two of the many ideas that that book puts forward.
One is quadratic voting, which allows people not only to vote for or against a particular issue but to express how strongly they hold that view by buying extra votes – up to a certain limit of assigned credits. The cost in credits of each additional vote increases by a quadratic formula. It’s designed to help small groups of voters who care deeply about particular issues while still constraining them from overly skewing results.
Weyl has also worked on a variation of the concept with Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin called quadratic funding, which in theory could diminish the influence of wealthy “whales” in voting systems that are based on financial holdings or contributions.
The second big idea we explored is that of perpetual open auctions. Here, every bit of property, including what we might otherwise think of as public property, is owned by private entities with the proviso that it is always up for auction and that the majority of the value created from it is shared equally among citizens as a social dividend.
Weyl and Posner argue that such an arrangement would incentivize owners to manage the property well, and that the wider distribution of wealth creation would give a greater number of people the wherewithal to start businesses. It would also be easier to develop land for infrastructure, such as high-speed rail lines, because the developer could easily acquire it.
Both of these ideas are rooted more in legal and process innovation than in software and distributed computing per se. But they intersect nicely with concepts associated with the crypto and blockchain space.
One is the potential for self-sovereign identity models to prevent people from gaming quadratic voting. Another is the potential enhancements that smart contracts, non-fungible token-based property, and decentralized finance (DeFi) concepts such as automated market-making might bring to open auctions. Also, quadratic funding might fix free-rider problems in blockchain projects, Buterin believes.
Smart taxation
Our other guest was Jeff Saviano, the global lead of tax innovation at EY. He is a member of the Prosperity Collaborative, within which organizations such as the World Bank, MIT Media Lab’s Connection Sciences lab and the New America Foundation are working with governments to improve transparency and efficiency in the collection and distribution of taxes.
Saviano talks of how blockchain-based tracing systems might not only give taxpayers a transparent view of how their taxes are being spent but also incorporate programmability.
For example, the actual, uniquely identified dollars that you contribute could be channeled directly and transparently into identifiable services that immediately benefit you and your community. Or, governments could use smart contracts to put hard constraints on those dollars, so only certain categories of expenditure, and not others, are enabled.
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In this episode, Michael J. Casey and Sheila Warren of the World Economic Forum are joined by the newly reelected Premier of Bermuda, David Burt, who is spearheading projects to use the island as a testing ground for stablecoins and to launch a communally owned national digital bank.
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This system is broken. It has become a leviathan – too big, too comprehensive. Giant fines have skewed the risk-versus-payoffs for banks, which impose compliance on everyone regardless of size. (This is despite AML guidelines typically allowing ID exemptions for transfers of up to $1000, and in the U.S. up to $3,000.)
It’s time to scale down, not up.
“There is a principle in design that in order to optimize the system, to maintain the most positive outcome, we have to sub-optimize the sub-systems,” crypto compliance expert Juan Llanos said during this week’s episode of the Money Reimagined podcast. “That means we may have to learn to live with a little money laundering. We might have to live with the risk that someone in Somalia might be a criminal trying to get through the cracks.”
A more open mind from regulators toward cryptographic technologies that help regulators manage system-wide risks without imposing strict identity requirements on everyone would also be welcome. Research by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab into how to identify system risks within otherwise anonymous bitcoin transaction flows offers one potential way forward.
The test is whether policymakers can respond to the human cost of the existing approach.
“Is this the system that really promotes prosperity in our world?” C-Labs General Counsel Brynly Llyr asked during the same podcast episode. “I mean, yes, money laundering is very serious, tax evasion is very serious, but when we look at the remittance markets and the folks who are relying on … transfers of $50 and $100 ... is this really what we want our system to be cracking down on? Is this the best use of our resources?”
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This week, Michael Casey and Sheila Warren talk to Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf about self-sovereign identity, the topic of this week's column. A developer whose three-decade career has seen him deeply involved in efforts to foster a more open internet, Brian grasps, like few others, the nuances of how human beings should live within a rapidly changing digital economy.
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Money is changing, but where do we go from here? Through high profile interviews and thoughtful analysis, join CoinDesk's Michael Casey and Sheila Warren of the World Economic Forum as they explore the connections between finance, human culture and our increasingly digital lives.
In this inaugural episode media studies professor Lana Swartz and multimedia artist Nicky Enright join the discussion.
Sushi, Hotdogs, Yams, Shrimp.
The whimsical, food-obsessed names of DeFi protocols are antithetical to the stodgy imagery of the mainstream financial system they seek to disrupt. Banks’ memes, by contrast, skew toward strength and durability. (Think of the rampart lions and Roman columns at the entrances of bank branches in old parts of London, New York or Paris.)
DeFi’s critics say the silly names betray the fact it’s merely a fad and a game – or worse, a scam. It’s all imaginary, they say. It’s not real.
The problem with that perspective is that all aspects of money, including the financial systems built on top of it, are imaginary.
And, in case you’re wondering, that’s a feature, not a bug.
Israeli historian Yuval Harari calls money “the most successful story ever told,” even more important to the evolution of society than religion, corporations and a host of other human-imagined institutions. Like those concepts, money’s power hinges on the collective adoption of a common belief system. It takes a set of mutually understood rules and gives them symbolic representation in a token we call a currency. In exchanging that token, we reach agreements that reflect those rules and so enable commerce, collaboration, value creation and, ultimately, civilization.
Storytelling and cultural creation have always been integral to how society fosters this belief system, how we’ve forged communities around currencies. It’s why representations of money and the conversations around it are rich with iconography, foundational myths and stirring language.
This process of collective imagination has become firmly tied to another powerful imaginary concept: the nation-state. This combination has been so effective that it has survived the introduction of new technologies and tokens over time. We’ve gone from shells to coins to banknotes to checks to credit cards to Venmo, and each time we’ve just accepted that a new transfer vehicle can convey the same rules and values we’ve always attached to our national currencies.
This is a useful lens to apply to the many new ideas for money bubbling up in the crypto world. Whether it’s bitcoin’s bid to become a digital gold-like currency or the fight between Uniswap and SushiSwap to dominate liquidity in DeFi’s lending markets, the semiotic process for creating memes and stories is vital to the establishment of a new system.
National elites used such methods to get us to collectively imagine a bank-centric system of fiat currencies. Those of us who want to change that need to do something similar. We need to reimagine money.
Imagined Communities
If you have a $100 bill in your wallet, take a good look at it.
On one side, there’s Ben Franklin’s balding head and torso, behind which are a quill, an inkwell with the Liberty Bell superimposed onto it, and an extract from the Declaration of Independence. There are also the seals of the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve, the signatures of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Treasurer, a serial number and other identifying numerals.
On the other, we see Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where Franklin and other Founding Fathers signed the declaration, along with the words “In God We Trust.” On both sides, the number 100 appears numerous times in and around a highly ornate border.
Combined with cotton threads and watermarks, the baroque design helps make the note difficult to counterfeit. But more importantly, the imagery appeals directly to patriotism. It’s all associated with the nation-state to which the dollar, we are encouraged to believe, is indelibly linked.
Now think about the actual value of the note, by which I mean the physical piece of paper. You could use it as a bookmark, maybe, make a paper plane out of it, or write a very small amount of information in very small print on it. But none of those uses add up to $100 in utility.
A banknote’s value comes almost entirely from our shared imagination, a commonality of beliefs fed by centuries of cultural production that forges a type of community. It’s only because the payer and the payee share those beliefs that this piece of paper can function as an instrument for clearing that community’s debts.
Each tribe of cryptocurrency advocates is endeavoring to create the same sense of community and belief around its preferred token. How they attain that is a cultural challenge.
What’s Real?
In November 2014, I created a video for The Wall Street Journal with Nicky Enright, a multimedia artist. We filmed him walking the streets of the Diamond District in New York’s Midtown as he wore an A-frame sandwich board and held a wad of “Globos,” his personal currency, in hand. The beautifully ornate notes were on sale for a $1, he told passersby, in a special two-for-one deal.
The interactions with people were fascinating. One of the most common questions was, “Is it real?” Enright’s answer was always something like, “Of course it’s real. You can see and hold it, right?” As a guest on this week’s inaugural Money Reimagined podcast, Enright reflected on those exchanges, noting that “people will question the Globo in a way that they rarely, if ever, question their own currency” and yet the very same questions about what is “real” could be applied to the purely symbolic value of the dollar.
The pertinent question for cryptocurrency advocates is: How do the purveyors and believers in a particular currency similarly get enough people to believe in it, to view it as “real?” And that’s again where the cultural conversation comes in.
It’s why Bitcoin’s culture is filled with ideas, phrases and iconography that help build community. Think of the word “HODL,” or the concept that Bitcoin is “The Honey Badger of Money,” or the almost religious devotion to the mysterious founding father, Satoshi. (By the way, it’s irrelevant that these ideas, like DeFi’s, seem frivolous to traditionalists. They are appropriately in line with the meme culture of the digital age, and consistent with the liberal conventions that internet culture unleashed, as names like Yahoo! and Google became corporate mainstays.)
Community = Governance
University of Virginia media studies professor Lana Swartz, author of the newly published New Money: How Payment Became Social Media, has some thoughts on all this. As the second guest on this week’s podcast, she reflected on the very early research that she and two colleagues did into Bitcoin’s culture in 2013. At that time, she said, “there was a real fixation on the idea that Bitcoin would be free from human institutions, free from human foibles and free from the need for human governance… But then all these early Bitcoin people ever really did was to talk and create community, and create ways to govern themselves, and create ways to think about this project.”
It’s a great insight. Money is inseparable from community, and community is about values, the expression of which involves governance. (Not government per se, but governance.)
This brings us full circle to DeFi, where tribes conduct meme warfare on Twitter and elsewhere to promote their tokens. Each of those tokens is tied to a protocol, which offers a different form of governance.
The difference with traditional money is that the enforcement of each token’s particular governance model comes via a decentralized network rather than the centralized institutions of a nation-state.
That shift is what makes it so promising. But it’s also why the cultural creation process is so challenging, as it must compete with the giant mindshare that traditional finance occupies. It’s why the meme-ing must continue.
The End of Wall Street As We Know It?
Hats off to Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal for coming up with a killer graph. Sadly, I’m using that descriptive literally. The chart, which appeared Tuesday in Bloomberg’s daily “Five Things to Start your Day” newsletter, maps the reservations at New York restaurants recorded by the website OpenTable and subway turnstile receipts from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, against the price of shares in SL Green, a real-estate investment trust focused on Manhattan office space. COVID-19 has done a number on all three.
Source: Bloomberg
I include this here, because when thinking about the future of Manhattan real estate, it’s hard not to think about the future of Wall Street. Banks, brokerages and other financial institutions are giant contributors to the city’s commercial rents, occupying large open-plan trading areas on multiple floors of some of NYC’s prime real estate. But in the COVID-19 era, banks have learned that, with the help of new low-latency connectivity packages, their traders can work pretty well from home, offering the prospect that the firms can save millions in rents if they pare back their footprint in the city.
An exodus from New York by bankers, traders and brokers would mark an end to an era. Hollywood’s movies about testosterone-fueled trading floors will become period pieces. The bigger question is what it means for the idea of Wall Street as a New York institution and, by extension, for the city’s outsized role in the regulation of the global financial system.
There are plenty of reasons for banks to maintain a legal residence in New York. Most important, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has a unique role within the Fed’s monetary system, as it conducts the open-market operations by which the central bank implements monetary policy. To act as a counterparty with FRBNY in those trades and gain access to that vital flow of monetary liquidity, banks need, at the very least, a capital markets subsidiary domiciled in New York. Their presence for that purpose in turn gives local regulators such as the New York Department of Financial Services a critical role in world finance.
But it’s not hard to imagine that a physical downgrading of banks’ physical presence in New York could, over time, degrade the city’s dominance. Will the rest of the U.S. continue to grant NYC its gatekeeping role?. And as central banks, potentially armed with digital currencies, move to expand the range of counterparties they deal with to include non-banks such as large companies and municipalities, New York’s centrality in the process could be further diminished. It’s yet another way in which the seismic events of 2020 could prove are setting it up as a turning point year for the world of finance.
Further reading:
Here in Venezuela, Doctors Struggle to Access Aid From Crypto Platform By José Rafael Peña Gholam
Digital Euro Would Provide Alternative to Cryptos, ECB President Lagarde Says By Dan Palmer
Iran Is Ripe for Bitcoin Adoption, Even as Government Clamps Down on Mining By Sandali Handagama
The Currency Cold War: Four Scenarios by Jeff Wilser
Ocean Protocol and Balancer Want to Do for Data What Uniswap Did for Coins by Ian Allison
How Small Business Can Achieve 'Economies of Scale' by 2030 by Paul Brody
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