QuantLayer Podcast: Recent Episodes
Vikram Ramakrishnan and Faizaan Shamsi
In this podcast, hosts Vikram Ramakrishnan and Faizaan Shamsi, partners at the software consultancy QuantLayer, talk to investors and builders of the cryptocurrency arena. We discuss how industry participants think about crypto assets, how they uncover fraud in the market, and which technologies will turn the budding, nascent crypto space into the revolutionary powerhouse early market participants had hoped for.
As software teams begin to migrate to serverless, they will require more in the way of serverless specific tooling: cost tracking, alerting, monitoring, and so on. Here, we look at a number of serverless tooling providers and discuss what they bring and how they will compete with traditional tooling services.
Topics:
- Installable versus Hosted Platform
- On Hosted Platform
- Tooling providers
- CloudZero
- Dashbird
- Hasura GraphQL Engine
- IOpipe
- Iron.io
- lumigo
- Node Lambda
- SCAR
- Sigma
- Stackery
- Thundra
- On framework
- On security
- Protego
- Threat Stack
- On Installable Platform
Links:
Hosted Platform - https://landscape.cncf.io/category=hosted-platform&format=card-mode&grouping=category
Tools - https://landscape.cncf.io/category=tools&format=card-mode&grouping=category
Framework - https://landscape.cncf.io/category=framework&format=card-mode&grouping=category
Security - https://landscape.cncf.io/category=security&format=card-mode&grouping=category
Installable Platform - https://landscape.cncf.io/category=installable-platform&format=card-mode&grouping=category
Serverless has caused a massive shift in approaches to application design. On this episode, we explore what serverless gives teams, and the tradeoffs involved in going the serverless route. We cover players like Amazon AWS, Google GCP, and Microsoft Azure, and what else is in store for the space.
Topics:
- What Serverless is
- On their benefits
- Monolithic versus microservices architectures
- How might development teams work on serverless applications versus traditional ones
- On tradeoffs of Serverless
- Business benefits of Serverless
- The drawbacks
Links:
Serverless - https://serverless.com
What is Serverless? - Squadex - https://squadex.com/insights/what-is-serverless/
Relational databases versus NoSQL is of interest today given growing data requirements for businesses. Real-time, internet of things, storing geodata, financial data are examples where traditional relational databases don’t make the cut required for modern systems. We discuss the successes and failings of relational databases, and how MongoDB’s approach to NoSQL data structures allow them to serve specific customer problems with specialized solutions. We look at some customer case studies and finish up with their business model.
Topics:
- What MongoDB is
- Their database
- Their overview
- What are the benefits
- Customer case studies
- On their solution
- Growth Strategy
Links:
Last 10K - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1441816/000144181619000067/mdb-013119x10k.htm
Last 10Q - https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1441816/000144181619000187/mdb-073119x10q.htm
Prospectus - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1441816/000104746917006446/a2233574z424b4.htm
Ycharts financials - https://ycharts.com/financials/MDB/income_statement/quarterly
MongoDB - https://www.mongodb.com/
Edge computing is a topic that isn’t getting enough coverage. We’ve covered CDNs like CloudFlare before, but we wanted to look at Fastly, an edge computing player that went public early in 2019. On this episode, we cover edge computing topics like rapidly purged caching. We run through a few case studies of the value edge computing brings some of Fastly’s customers. We discuss major risks that the company might face and postulate on why we think they’re trading at a discount compared to other SaaS companies like CloudFlare ($NET) and Elastic ($ESTC).
Topics:
- QuantLayer Mission Statement Analysis
- Case studies they mention in their prospectus
- On their section called, "Our Solution: The Developer's Edge"
- How they categorize their strenghts
- Who are their competitors and how to they sit there
- Major differences versus Cloudflare
- On their sections called, "Factors Affecting Our Performance"
- Faizaan's major concerns about Fastly
Links:
- Prospectus - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1517413/000119312519150526/d702138d424b4.htm
- Latest 10Q - https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1517413/000151741319000022/fsly-10qx93019.htm
- Fastly is An Under Appreciated Growth Story - https://www.cmlviz.com/2019/11/12/FSLY/fastly-nyse-fsly-is-an-under-appreciated-growth-story.html
- Fastly Blog - https://www.fastly.com/blog/build-on-fastly-with-code-blocks-and-tutorials
There has been a lot of interest around developer-first banking APIs recently. On this episode, we go over recent tech IPO Silvergate Capital (ticker $SI), which is a digital currency focused bank and settlement network. We discuss their business, particularly around digital currency initiatives and their Silvergate Exchange Network (or SEN). We get into the weeds of what it means to claim to be an API first financial services company.
Enjoy the episode.
Topics:
- On Silvergate Capital
- QuantLayer mission statement analysis
- Overview of Silvergate Capital
- Digital Currency Initiative
- Silvergate Exchange Network
- What their API offers
- Growth strategy
- Risk factors
Links:
- Prospectus - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1312109/000119312519288512/d568616d424b4.htm
- Silvergate Capital - https://www.silvergatebank.com/
- Banking APIs - Open Banking Platform by Silvergate Bank - https://www.silvergatebank.com/api/developer-tools.html
- Silvergate Sandbox API - https://silvergate.portal.azure-api.net/docs/services/5aec9e3121b53188f5be9853/operations/access-token
Recently, there has been a lot of recent interest in customized semiconductors. Bitcoin mining has highlighted the interest in ASICs, or application specific chips, and as we move up the customized application layer stack, discussion of AI and ML chips becomes necessary. On this episode, we look at Canaan Mining, a chinese Bitcoin mining chip manufacturer. And we look at them in the context of growing trends in AI and ML chips. We compare and contrast AMD and NVIDIA and discuss the new growth in startups in the traditionally capital intensive space. We finish up with what you should be on the lookout for when considering investing in chip manufacturers.
Topics:
- Canaan F1
- On their mission statement
- Quick overview on Canaan
- Industry overview
- Overview of bitcoin and blockchain mining economics
- AI and ML chips
- What CPU is
- What GPU is
- What ASIC is
- What TPU is
- On their risk factors
Links:
History and Corporate Structure - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1780652/000119312519276263/g773846g13c91.jpg
Canaan.io - https://canaan.io/
IPO prospectus - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1780652/000119312519276263/d773846df1.htm#rom773846_1
Canaan Creative - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan_Creative
SEC Form F-1 - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sec-form-f-1.asp
Specialized AI Chips Hold Both Promise and Peril for Developers - https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/processors/specialized-ai-chips-hold-both-promise-and-peril-for-developers
NVIDIA Gross Profit Margin - https://ycharts.com/companies/NVDA/gross_profit_margin
On this episode, we speak with Barney Mannerings, founder of Vega Protocol, which is a blockchain product initially focused on derivatives markets. Barney understands this space really well, and it was a pleasure talking to him about what he’s building at Vega. Broadly, we discuss the DeFi, or Parallel Financial System, space, and Barney talks to us about why he thinks this space is important. He explains how Vega, in many ways, augments and replaces some exchanges, and how it serves as an integration layer with other protocols. We finish up with some areas of tech that Barney is excited about outside of crypto.
Topics:
- Barney's background
- All about his company, Vega
- Parallel Financial System
- Why DeFi is important
- Thoughts on building ETH versus BTC
- Which derivatives does Vega support currently
- Types of derivatives users could create
- Market map
- How ETH moving to ETH 2.0 would affect DeFi business
- Upcoming product roadmap
Links:
- Vega Protocol - https://vega.xyz/
- Twitter - Vega Protocol - https://twitter.com/vegaprotocol
- Twitter - Barney - https://twitter.com/barnabee?lang=en
On this episode, we dig into Datadog’s (Ticker: DDOG) IPO prospectus. We discuss their approach to analytics and monitoring, and how companies can benefit from using them. We look at a few case studies of how companies derive value from their product, and one in particular, that can generate value from its use. We also run through their developer-friendly offering and how quickly the product can be incorporated into a system. We spend a little time with their financials and then discuss our view of thinking about them as a product versus an ecosystem.
Topics:
- What Datadog is
- Anecdotes of personal use with Elixir
- On their IPO prospectus
- Industry Background
- Opportunity
- Solution and Key Strengths
- Key Benefits to Our Customers
- Growth Strategies
- Risk Factors
Links
- Datadog - https://www.datadoghq.com/
- IPO prospectus - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1561550/000119312519249577/d745413d424b4.htm
- Chart - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1561550/000119312519249577/g745413g15v58.gif
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54: Content Delivery Networks, DDOS Protection and Bot Fighting: CloudFlare as a Web Performance and Security Company - https://quantlayer.libsyn.com/content-delivery-networks-ddos-protection-and-bot-fighting-cloudflare-as-a-web-performance-and-security-company
-
38: A Look at CrowdStrike’s IPO Prospectus and Their Approach to Endpoint Security - https://quantlayer.libsyn.com/a-look-at-crowdstrikes-ipo-prospectus-and-their-approach-to-endpoint-security
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15: Open Source as Revenue Driver: How Elasticsearch Uses Open Source for Revenue Growth, Tech Investing and Crypto, a Cautionary Tale of Bad Crypto Trading Psychology and Flash Crashes - https://quantlayer.libsyn.com/15-open-source-as-revenue-driver-how-elasticsearch-uses-open-source-for-revenue-growth-tech-investing-and-crypto-a-cautionary-tale-of-bad-crypto-trading-psychology-and-flash-crashes
We go over the CloudFlare IPO prospectus, which calls itself a “Web Performance and Security Company.” We discuss their mission statement, their stated competitive advantages, risks they may face and a quick overview of their financials.
Topics:
- The Web Performance and Security Company
- Cloudflare's mission
- Companies putting mission statements int their prospectuses
- How would an early stage startup use Cloudflare versus a Fortune 500
- On "Our Industry" section
- On "Why We Win" section
- Disruptive Business Model
- Ease of Use
- Efficient Go-to-Market Model
- Product Innovation and Velocity
- Integrated, Global Offering
- Trust and Neutrality
- On "Growth Strategy" section
- List of concerns that the company and the company's lawyers have
- Talking about the section title, "Key Business Metrics and Non-GAAP Financial Measures
Links:
Cloudfare.com - https://www.cloudflare.com/
Cloudflare IPO Prospectus - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477333/000119312519244325/d735023d424b4.htm
Yogababble | No Mercy / No Malice - https://www.profgalloway.com/yogababble
Google prospectus - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504143377/d424b4.htm
Software Consultant Ron Lichty joins us to talk about all things software management. Ron has a treasure trove of experience helping teams accelerate and amplify their software practices. We look at the history of waterfall-style projects transitioning to Agile projects. We talk about his time as a product manager at Apple and his work with Charles Schwab at the time they launched their electronic trading platform. Ron articulates his views on the different types of developers out there and how to motivate them. We finish up with a couple areas Ron is excited about: Blockchain and Virtual Reality.
Topics:
- Ron's background
- History of waterfall-style projects transitioning to Agile projects
- Charles Schwab interactive tools
- Talking about Extreme Programming
- On Scrum
- Software development is a team sport
- Differences between this notion of "being agile" versus "doing agile"
- Case of estimating
- Talking about Brooke's law
- On being a good managers
- Motivators versus de-motivators
- Effective management at different stages of companies
- Some interesting technologies and trends that he's optimistic about
Links:
- Ron Lichty's website - https://ronlichty.com/
- Managing the Unmanageable: The Book - http://managingtheunmanageable.net/
- Managing the Unmanageable: Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Unmanageable-Insights-Software-People-ebook/dp/B009CFV8BY
- Waterfall Software Development - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model
- Agile Software Development - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development
- RUP - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_Unified_Process
- Harvard Business Review case study on motivating employees - https://hbr.org/2003/01/one-more-time-how-do-you-motivate-employees
- Drive by Daniel H. Pink - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004P1JDJO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
On this episode, I speak to Zaki Manian from Tendermint. We get deep into the weeds of interoperability, his notions of interop between fast chains and fast and slow chains. We discuss the IBC protocol, which is a spec for adapters between different chains along with all the complexities when dealing with cross-chain communications. Moreover, we examine design and development principles when building product in this space, and the differences when building traditional software product. Zaki goes over some exciting projects that are building on Cosmos as well.
Topics:
- Who Zaki is
- Talking about interoperability
- Two classes of blockchains
- What is Cosmos trying to do
- Main issues when getting different chains to talk to one another
- Main design principles when setting out to design the Cosmos network
- Interesting projects he see people building with Cosmos
- Talking about consensus system and incentive system
- Minimal Viable Ecosystem Acceleration talk
Links:
Cosmos Network - https://cosmos.network/
Twitter - Cosmos Network - https://twitter.com/cosmos
Telegram - Cosmos Network - https://t.me/Cosmos_Network
Zaki's Twitter - https://twitter.com/zmanian
Minimal Viable Ecosystem Acceleration talk at MIT - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqopwqXyURw
Cosmos SDK Tutorial - https://github.com/cosmos/sdk-application-tutorial
Cosmos Game of Stakes - https://blog.cosmos.network/game-of-stakes-closing-ceremonies-eddb71d3b114
We chatted with Aaron Blankstein, Core Engineer from Blockstack. Blockstack is a decentralized computing network, which makes it simple for developers to build blockchain-based applications. We learn about Blockstack’s incentive system, and what will be changing from v1 to v2. We discuss a few use cases of Blockstack, like the Blockstack Naming Service, or BNS. We also go over Blockstack’s smart contract language Clarity, and the broad tooling that will exist for developers working on the platform. We finish up learning about Aaaron’s fascination with augmented Reality and adversarial machine learning.
Topics:
- Who Aaron is
- How he describe Blockstack
- Centralized versus decentralized application architecture
- What is Blockstack's relationship with Bitcoin
- How does consensus work in Blockstack
- What is Blockstack naming system
- On Clarity smart contracts language
- Decentralized storage system called Gaia
- On authentication and how it works
- JavaScript tools
- Radiks
- Blockstack.js
Links:
- Clarity - https://docs.blockstack.org/core/smart/overview.html
- Blockstack forums - https://forum.blockstack.org
- Blockstack - https://blockstack.org/
- White Paper - https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf
- Papers - Blockstack - https://blockstack.org/papers
- Blackstack Docs - https://docs.blockstack.org/
- Aaron Blankstein Website - https://aaron.blankstein.com/
- App.co - https://app.co/
- The Blackstack Javascript - https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack.js/
We chatted with Charles Phan, Chief Technology Officer from Interdax. Interdax is a next generation digital assets exchange with strong engineering roots in High Frequency Trading firms, traditional exchanges, hedge funds, investment banks, market data and liquidity providers. This episode was a lot of fun. We talked about Charles’ background in traditional finance and a prior life as a derivatives trader. We then compare and contrast traditional and crypto derivatives markets. We also talk technical details of perpetual swaps and how they differ from other derivative products. Finally, we discuss the engineering underpinnings of the interdax platform and UX and UI considerations when building the product. We finish up discussing technologies Charles is excited about. Hope you enjoy this one.
Topics:
- Charles Phan's background
- On derivatives markets and trading
- Differences between derivatives markets in traditional finance versus crypto
- On Interdax
- What his role is at Interdax
- Building the Interdax
Book:
Dynamic Hedging by Nassim Taleb
Links:
- Interdax - https://www.interdax.com/
- Twitter - https://twitter.com/interdax
Ben DiFrancesco, software consultant and founder of scopelift, joins us on this one. Two things we really respect about Ben are his ability to break down complex technical topics and also his ability to be honest about what crypto and blockchain offer us. He’s at heart, a technologist, and his passion for and dedication to crypto is palpable. This conversation contains a bit of philosophy around Bitcoin and Ethereum, particularly around how polarized the two spaces have become. We get into Bitcoin and Ethereum’s respective reasons for existing and how they can work together, how developers can use these new digital primitives to build applications, and business opportunities in the space. We also cover DeFi, and how smart contracts enable Maker and Dai.
Always enjoy talking to Ben, and I hope you enjoy this one.
Topics:
- Smart Contracts & use cases that excite him
- BTC + ETH working together
- DeFi movement
- Crypto Primitives
- Quality of Web Dev versus Crypto tooling
- ETH and “rich statefulness” and what that means
- Some techs outside of blockchain and crypto that he is excited about
Links:
- Ben’s twitter: https://twitter.com/BenDiFrancesco
- Ben’s consultancy ScopeLift: https://www.scopelift.co/
- Newsletter: https://www.buildblockchain.tech/newsletter
- Podcast #1: http://quantlayer.libsyn.com/4-a-discussion-with-software-consultant-ben-difrancesco-on-building-great-blockchain-software
- https://medium.com/@QuantLayer/building-great-blockchain-software-smart-contract-scaling-and-elixir-ae94687e34dd
- https://usedai.org
- https://github.com/apbendi/use-dai
- Philly Blockchain Tech Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Blockchain-Tech/
- Austin Griffith: https://twitter.com/austingriffith
- Mastering Bitcoin: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain/dp/1491954388/
- Mastering Ethereum: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Ethereum-Building-Smart-Contracts/dp/1491971940
We recap our attendance at the Blockchain Training Conference last week. We cover the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4)’s new certifications and their conference’s emphasis on developer and professional education. We also look at the slew of great talks on The Lightning Network, bitcoin privacy, and smart contracts.
Topics:
- What does C4 stands for
- Keynote w/ Pamela Morgan and Andreas M. Antonopoulos
- Announcement: Mastering the Lightning Network
- C4 and it's Purpose
- CBP Prep Course w/ Andreas
- Lightning Network Payment Channels Update w/ Renee Pickhardt
- Crypto for Creatives w/ Stephanie Murphy
- Clash of Expectations - UX and usability
- Bitcoin Privacy On and Offchain w/ Janine Römer
- Blockchain Analysis versus Surveillance
- Wyoming’s blockchain laws
- Law and the Lightning network - Peter van Valkenburg, Coin Center
- Joining the Lightning Network w/ Beatrice Leung, Project Manager at Radar
- Advanced Lightning Applications w/ Olaoluwa Osuntokun, CTO at lightning labs aka roasbeef
Links:
- CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4) - https://cryptoconsortium.org/
- Standards | CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4) - https://cryptoconsortium.org/standards/
- Blockchain Training Conference - https://blockchaintraining.org/home/home/
- Mastering Lightning Network Book on Github - https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook
- PrivacyTools.io - https://www.privacytools.io/
- That One Privacy Site - https://thatoneprivacysite.net/
- Developer Tools - Radar ION - radar.tech - https://ion.radar.tech/dev-tools
- Onboarding - Radar ION - radar.tech - https://ion.radar.tech/onboarding
Dr. Ed Felten is a professor of Computer Science at Princeton, he’s served as Chief Technologist at the FTC and Deputy CTO at the White House. He’s also the cofounder of Offchain Labs, a Princeton-based startup that’s focusing on 2nd layer smart contract solutions to improve scalability. This was one of our favorite conversations to date. We discuss smart contracts and their current problems. We discuss Arbitrum, Offchain Labs’ solution to the smart contract scaling problem which uses a system of validators to provide a guarantee to smart contract participants. Moreover, we discuss at length how their AnyTrust guarantee works, and why only a single validator is needed to maintain a working system. We also go through how an existing dApp can get ported over to Arbitrum. Finally, we talk high level tech themes: How technology and public policy are becoming more and more interconnected, how technology advising will become more and more important over time, and other technologies he’s really optimistic about. It’s a really packed episode. Enjoy.
Topics:
On the idea of "Bitcoin works in practice, but not in theory"
Smart contracts
Primary problems with smart contracts
Real world applications of smart contracts
What Offchain Labs is doing with smart contracts
Arbitrum & Validators
Porting Existing dApp to Arbitrum
Offchain business model
On blockchain
Academia to Industry
Advisor to Obama Administraion
On his co-authored paper titled, "A Cryptographic Escrow for Treaty Declarations and Step-by-Step Verification"
Optimistic technologies people don't know about
Links:
Coursera course:
- https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency
- http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs27philippe.pdf
Github: https://github.com/OffchainLabs
Whitepaper: https://offchainlabs.com/arbitrum.pdf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EdFelten
Princeton website: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~felten/
We have Rob Zuber, CTO from CircleCI on. A lot of the projects we work on implement CircleCI, so we were super excited to speak to Rob. We talk about his background and how he became part of CircleCI through an acquisition. We also get into one of his favorite topics: language. Particularly the words that are used in projects, and how important they are for workflow. We also discuss “Domain Driven Design,” or the idea that when creating a layer of functionality, to keep it bounded within its domain so other layers don’t creep into it. This was an engineering heavy episode that was a lot of fun. Hope you enjoy this one.
But before we get to the conversation, here’s a word from a sponsor, Blockchain Training Conference, that I’m really excited about. What if there was an educational industry conference, where all of the sessions were focused on teaching you something instead of selling you something? There is and it’s Blockchain Training Conference 2019. It’s going to be hosted August 28th to the 30th in Denver, Colorado. BTC2019 offers every attendee the chance to leave certified and confident in their understanding of blockchain technology. Move past the jargon to gain a robust understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies with master classes taught by industry luminaries like Andreas M. Antonopoulos, René Pickhardt, Jameson Lopp, Pamela Morgan, and many others. Register today and learn more at blockchaintraining.org.
We also have a coupon code for our listeners that you can use to get a 10% discount for the conference: quantlayer10
Go to https://blockchaintraining.org/attend/ and hit buy on your ticket, and put in the coupon code quantlayer10 (that’s Q U A N T L A Y E R and the number 10).
We are going to be at this conference in August, so reach out if you will be there as well. Would love to meet in meatspace.
Topics:
- Rob's background & early time at CircleCI
- Other technical problems they had to deal with
- On his favorite topics: Language
- Concepts he highlighted on his talked, "Words Matter: Ubiquitous Language and Throughput"
- Domain Driven Design
- On developer tools and product development around those tools
- On his blog: Predictions for 2018 from Rob Zuber, CTO at CircleCI
Books:
Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans
Implementing Domain Driven Design by Vaughn Vernon
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object Oriented Software by Erich Gamma
Links:
CircleCI: https://circleci.com/
Rob’s twitter: https://twitter.com/z00b
Predictions for 2018 from Rob Zuber, CTO at CircleCI: https://circleci.com/blog/predictions-for-2018-from-rob-zuber-cto-at-circleci/
“Words Matter: Ubiquitous Language and Throughput”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4LNezYjLLM
What it means to be remote-first vs. remote-friendly - https://circleci.com/blog/what-it-means-to-be-remote-first-vs-remote-friendly/
High performing engineering teams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E3f6v7zHP8
Devops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdxj5O-a58E
10 ways you’re doing devops wrong: https://circleci.com/blog/10-ways-you-re-doing-devops-wrong/
On this episode, we have Peter MacDonald and Joe Schnare from Wunderite, an insurance startup based in Boston. This was a really interesting conversation around how they are improving insurance workflows for agencies around the country through programmatic data aggregation. We talk about their backgrounds, get into the details of the black box industry known as insurance, and how they work with customers on product development. I learned a lot from this conversation. Enjoy.
But before we get to the conversation, here’s a word from a sponsor, Blockchain Training Conference, that I’m really excited about. What if there was an educational industry conference, where all of the sessions were focused on teaching you something instead of selling you something? There is and it’s Blockchain Training Conference 2019. It’s going to be hosted August 28th to the 30th in Denver, Colorado. BTC2019 offers every attendee the chance to leave certified and confident in their understanding of blockchain technology. Move past the jargon to gain a robust understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies with master classes taught by industry luminaries like Andreas M. Antonopoulos, René Pickhardt, Jameson Lopp, Pamela Morgan, and many others. Register today and learn more at blockchaintraining.org.
We also have a coupon code for our listeners that you can use to get a 10% discount for the conference: quantlayer10
Go to https://blockchaintraining.org/attend/ and hit buy on your ticket, and put in the coupon code quantlayer10 (that’s Q U A N T L A Y E R and the number 10).
We are going to be at this conference in August, so reach out if you will be there as well. Would love to meet in meatspace.
Topics:
- Peter and Joe’s background
- The reason why they are interested in insurance
- Broad problems overall with the insurance industry that Wunderite is solving
- Industry verticals that they're focusing on
- Couple case studies on insurance workflow before Wunderite, and how that changed after
- On their sales process and how they decide who to reach out to
- Some big wins they’re happy about and some learning lessons they would have approached differently
- On regulatory concerns
- On their business model
- Are they looking to raising capital
- What they're looking forward to next
Links
Wunderite - https://www.wunderite.com/
Wunderite Blog - https://blog.wunderite.com/
BNT presentation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H12tIa0EDY8
We speak with Andreas Antonopoulos, author of Mastering Bitcoin, The Internet of Money, and Mastering Ethereum, and also board member at the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium, known as C4. C4 will be hosting the Blockchain Training Conference in Denver, Colorado at the end of August. In this conversation, we learn about the conference, how Andreas thinks about blockchain teaching pedagogy, and the certifications that C4 is offering now: the Certified Bitcoin Professional (or CBP) certification and the CryptoCurrency Security Standard (or CCSS) certification. We learn all about the certifications and what they allow the holder to do. Always a pleasure to talk with Andreas. If you enjoyed this one, please rate and review us on iTunes. It would help us out a lot. Thanks for listening to the episode.
But before we get to the conversation, here’s a word from a sponsor, Blockchain Training Conference, that I’m really excited about. What if there was an educational industry conference, where all of the sessions were focused on teaching you something instead of selling you something? There is and it’s Blockchain Training Conference 2019. It’s going to be hosted August 28th to the 30th in Denver, Colorado. BTC2019 offers every attendee the chance to leave certified and confident in their understanding of blockchain technology. Move past the jargon to gain a robust understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies with master classes taught by industry luminaries like Andreas M. Antonopoulos, René Pickhardt, Jameson Lopp, Pamela Morgan, and many others. Register today and learn more at blockchaintraining.org.
We also have a coupon code for our listeners that you can use to get a 10% discount for the conference: quantlayer10
Go to https://blockchaintraining.org/attend/ and hit buy on your ticket, and put in the coupon code quantlayer10.
We are going to be at this conference in August, so reach out if you will be there as well. Would love to meet in meatspace.
Topics
- How they decided to do the Blockchain Training conference
- What a Blockchain Training conference is
- What are they focusing more on 2019 conference versus 2016 conference
- How they produce keys
- Talking about the workshops
- How they figured out the programming
- Pedagogical philosphy
- On certifications
- Certified Bitcoin Professional
- CryptoCurrency Security Standard
- What do the certifications get you
- Topics they would have liked to see
- On their long term goals
Links
Blockchain training conf: https://blockchaintraining.org/schedule/
Certification Information: https://cryptoconsortium.org/
Andreas Antonopoulos twitter: https://twitter.com/aantonop
Our last Podcast with Andreas: http://quantlayer.libsyn.com/andreas-m-antonopoulos-and-the-state-of-cryptocurrency-ten-years-in
Mastering Bitcoin: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain-ebook/dp/B071K7FCD4/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?crid=ELNFUIRYNC1D&keywords=andrea%27s+antonopoulos&qid=1565103889&s=gateway&sprefix=andrea%27s+antonopoulos%2Caps%2C370&sr=8-1-fkmr0
The Internet of Money: https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Money-Andreas-M-Antonopoulos-ebook/dp/B01L9WM0H8/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?crid=ELNFUIRYNC1D&keywords=andrea%27s+antonopoulos&qid=1565103889&s=gateway&sprefix=andrea%27s+antonopoulos%2Caps%2C370&sr=8-2-fkmr0
The Internet of Money Volume 2: https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Money-Two-Andreas-Antonopoulos-ebook/dp/B075VB7LVG/ref=sr_1_2?crid=ELNFUIRYNC1D&keywords=andrea%27s+antonopoulos&qid=1565103889&s=gateway&sprefix=andrea%27s+antonopoulos%2Caps%2C370&sr=8-2
Mastering Ethereum: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Ethereum-Building-Smart-Contracts-ebook/dp/B07KGLNL76/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=mastering+ethereum&qid=1565103907&s=gateway&sr=8-3
We speak with Stuart Popejoy co-founder from Kadena. This was a really great technical conversation around the hybrid public-private blockchain that Kadena is building with their Chainweb platform and LISP inspired smart contract language Pact. We cover how traditional finance firms incorporate new technologies into their workflow, real world use cases of Kadena, and what’s happening in the Enterprise. We also get into the technical details of Chainweb’s Proof-of-Work consensus system and the importance of writing safe code, which is an underpinning of the Pact language.
Topics:
- What Kadena is
- His background, genesis story/interest in blockchain
- Given his experience at JPM, how do large banks approach using new technologies
- What is the vetting process at a bank like to incorporate a new tech
- Real world use cases of Kadena
- How he thinks about keeping things simple, designing a language for non-developers
- High level overview of Kadena
- All the key components of Kadena
- TPS vs. predictable availability
- Private vs. Public blockchain vs. Hybrid blockchains
- What are the things that are being built in Enterprise
- Your decentralized vision / pie in the sky type of thoughts around what things will look like
- For developers who want to work with Kadena, what steps would your recommend they take
Links:
- GH Repo: https://github.com/kadena-io
- Deal w/ USCF: https://prn.to/2MnC7Cp
-
Pact Language
- Tutorial: https://pactlang.org/
- REPL: https://pact.kadena.io/
- Key features: https://bit.ly/2K2LF44
- The EVM Is Fundamentally Unsafe - https://medium.com/kadena-io/the-evm-is-fundamentally-unsafe-ba486cb17f1f
- Kadena - Medium - https://medium.com/kadena-io
A word from a sponsor we’re really excited about. What if there was an educational industry conference, where all of the sessions were focused on teaching you something instead of selling you something? There is and it’s Blockchain Training Conference 2019. Hosted August 28-30 in Denver, CO, BTC2019 offers every attendee the chance to leave certified and confident in their understanding of blockchain technology. Move past the jargon to gain a robust understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies with master classes taught by industry luminaries like Andreas M. Antonopoulos, René Pickhardt, Jameson Lopp, Pamela Morgan, and many others. Register today and learn more at blockchaintraining.org.
On this episode, we look at a recently filed IPO, Father Time. This isn’t a hot IPO. In fact, no bankers are underwriting this. What’s interesting about this one is that it’s entirely self-underwritten by the company founder. They are planning to build a coupon system from scratch, so we talk through how that would look from a technical perspective. We consider their business model and the budget in their S-1.
Topics:
- On Father Time IPO
- What a blank check type deal is
- How to work with a client like Father Time in order to build the software application
- Description of business
- Challenges of this industry faces
- On using paper coupons
- Father Time’s future products
- LoyaltyExpress
- CouponExpress
- StoreFront Central
- Revenue Model
Link:
Father Time IPO -https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1702388/000149315219008478/forms-1.htm
We look at the SEC’s charging of Kik Interactive’s unregulated securities offering. We recap the SEC complaint, outlining their argument that Kik was a deeply underfunded, low-revenue, high-expense company that attempted a “hail mary” by circumventing securities law by running the Kin ICO. Finally, we step through the pieces of evidence the SEC presents.
Topics:
- SEC put out a press release along with a complaint on Kik Interactive
- SEC Charges Issuer With Conducting $100 Million Unregistered ICO
Links:
Press release: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2019-87
Complaint: https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2019/comp-pr2019-87.pdf
Fireside #8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irlVLDKKlr4
We look at Martin Fowler’s article titled “Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?” We discuss the gives and takes of writing good software and managing technical debt. We look at misconceptions around software quality and cost, and how planning and blueprinting (architecting) up front can save teams money in the future. Moreover, we look at how good software offers teams a competitive advantage over others due to the ability to ship new features quickly and confidently.
Topics:
- Who Martin Fowler is
- On Martin Fowler's article titled, "Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?"
- Are we used to a trade-off between quality and cost
- Software quality means many things
- Internal quality does not matter to customers
- Internal quality makes it easier to enhance software
- Customers do care that new features come quickly
- Visualizing the impact of internal quality
- Even the best teams create cruft
- High quality software is cheaper to produce
Links:
Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost? - Martin Fowler - https://martinfowler.com/articles/is-quality-worth-cost.html
Martin Fowler - https://martinfowler.com/
Betteridge's law of headlines - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
We look at a recent SIM port hack where a crypto professional lost $100k worth of crypto from his Coinbase account. We discuss in detail how he was attacked and how you can safeguard your crypto assets better. We then do a recap of the one-day Elixir conference, Empex, where topics ranged from OTP to LiveView to functional programming more broadly.
Topics:
- What a SIM port attack is
- How people can be careful
- Their experience at Empex
- Their thoughts on Elixir
Links:
- The Most Expensive Lesson Of My Life: Details of SIM port hack - https://medium.com/coinmonks/the-most-expensive-lesson-of-my-life-details-of-sim-port-hack-35de11517124
- Monero’s Fluffy Pony - https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/1130555634330554368?s=21
- EMPEX - https://empex.co/nyc.html
- Erlang Ecosystem Foundation - https://erlef.org/
- SimpleBet - https://simplebet.io/
- Frame.io - https://frame.io/
- Manning - https://www.manning.com/
- The Pragmatic Bookshelf - https://pragprog.com/
- How to use Mint - https://scoutapm.com/blog/how-to-use-mint-an-awesome-http-library-for-elixir-part-01
We explore the CrowdStrike IPO by delving into its SEC Prospectus: An examination of their technology, and in particular their approach to endpoint security. By wading through the buzzword ocean, we bring you the key areas to focus on in this S-1. We consider their network effects, notably how signing up more customers to their platform improves security of all their customers. We go through a few case studies of their Falcon product line. Finally, we look at their stated risks.
Topics:
- On CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc
- Security Cloud
- On Falcon platform
- Single intelligent lightweight agent
- Threat Graph
- Low friction land-and-expand sales strategy
- Cybersecurity threats are greater than ever
- Proliferation of workloads expanding the attack surface
- On-premise security architectures are constrained
- Other existing security products have limitations
- Creation of the Security Cloud
- Growth Strategy
Links:
- Form S-1 - CrowdStrike Holding's, Inc. - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1535527/000104746919003095/a2238800zs-1.htm
- CrowdStrike - Falcon Platform - https://www.crowdstrike.com/endpoint-security-products/falcon-platform/
- CrowdStrike Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrowdStrike#Russian_hacking_investigations
TokenAnalyst’s founder Sid Shekhar joins us on this one to talk about the on-chain analysis tools they’re building for the crypto industry. Particularly, we spoke about the delineation of on-chain versus off-chain and why on-chain data hosts a treasure trove of valuable information. We also talk about how funds can benefit their investors by investigating open ledgers. Lots of really good stuff in here like analogies to dark pools, exchange liquidity analysis and more.
Topics:
- His background and how he got interested in crypto
- On TokenAnalyst
- His delineation of on-chain versus off-chain data
- The reason on-chain data is important
- Things we can learn from on-chain data
- Where he thinks on-chain data is going and the things he thinks will play into price prediction
- On running a crypto-focused company
- What the next hot coin is
- Something he's really proud about recently that keeps him going
- Something he wishes he learned earlier
Links:
TokenAnalyst - https://www.tokenanalyst.io/
TokenAnalyst – Medium - https://medium.com/tokenanalyst
Under the hood of the world computer – TokenAnalyst – Medium - https://medium.com/tokenanalyst/under-the-hood-of-the-world-computer-caf957fb8a4c
Dissecting Blocks – TokenAnalyst – Medium - https://medium.com/tokenanalyst/dissecting-blocks-bf218cdff39d
We spoke with Edison Lim, Application Lead at Zilliqa about their protocol. We consider Zilliqa’s approach to scaling and energy usage. We discuss their proof of work consensus model for miner verification, and their approach to sharded consensus groups. We take a technical look at their smart contract language Scilla and its roots in OCaml, and why formal verification is important.
Topics:
- What Zilliqa is
- On smart contract language
- Different consensus mechanism
- What problems are they solving
- Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance
- What their consensus model is
- Types of business or markets that benefit from their solution
Links:
Zilliqa - https://zilliqa.com/
For Developers - Zilliqa - https://zilliqa.com/for-developers.html
Scilla Overview Paper - https://ilyasergey.net/papers/scilla-overview.pdf
What is Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance? - https://blockonomi.com/practical-byzantine-fault-tolerance/
Ecosystem Partners - Zilliqa - https://zilliqa.com/ecosystem-partners.html
We spoke to David Baker from Mercadyne Funds, my first Portfolio Manager at Vikram’s first Hedge Fund analyst job many years ago. David is a really smart guy and he takes a unique approach to generating alpha by investing in micro and small-cap companies. He joins us to talk about all things investing. We cover a slew of topics: How he started investing and his first call with a management team at age thirteen, how he parlayed his experience as a broker to starting his first micro and small-cap fund, how he runs his current fund, risk management, and his current investment philosophy. We go over factors that make attractive investment opportunities (huge TAM, compelling biz model, accelerating sales growth, high insider ownership) and also red flags that he sees on a regular basis. He also talks about his experience investing in turnaround self storage units and finally, we finish up discussing his views on the current economy and what sectors he likes right now.
Topics:
- How he got into investing
- How law school helped mold his interest in investing
- On raising capital
- Types of stocks he invested in
- Investment thesis for small and micro capital
- What a multiple expansion is and how it works
- What he likes about the ZAG story
- Assessing management
- On trading psychology
- On private investing
- Self-storage investment profile
Link:
FactSet Insight - https://insight.factset.com/
Profiles:
Mercadyne - https://www.mercadyne.com
Newsletters – Mercadyne - https://www.mercadyne.com/newsletters/
Hey everyone, this is Vikram from QuantLayer and thanks for listening to our 34th podcast. On this episode, Santiago Roel Santos from EON joins us to talk about proof of stake and staking. We speak about Santiago’s investing background, how he entered crypto, and the Staking as a Service business he’s building now at EON. The discussion covers a lot of great topics for crypto entrepreneurs: UX considerations when building crypto products, how EON manages technical and security issues when staking on the behalf of others, and EON’s business model. This is a must listen for anyone building crypto products for consumers.
Topics:
- Santiago's background
- His thoughts at the time when he's analysing companies
- When margin changes
- How he got interested in crypto
- His peer's responses as an analyst
- What staking is
- Proof of work and proof of stake
- Who/how does a transaction get validated
- His background on investing
- What they're up to at EON
- A scenario how staking works
- What happens if the server goes down
- On customer service
- How they handle availability and security
- The worst thing that can happen if people are staking with them (EON)
- Their qualification criteria for what comes on for their platform
- What gets him excited of what they're doing at EON
- How they compare and contrast with others
- His thoughts on exchanges could offer a staking service to their customers
Links:
J.P. Morgan - https://www.jpmorgan.com/global/jpmorgan
Sageview - http://www.sageviewcapital.com/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/
Microsoft - https://www.microsoft.com/
BitMain - https://www.bitmain.com/
Horizon - https://www.horizen.global/
Cosmos - https://cosmos.network/
Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/
Staked - https://staked.us/
Profile:
Medium - https://medium.com/@eon_staking
EON - https://eon.capital/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/eon_staking
We speak about the problem around connecting smart contracts to real world data, how oracles solve that problem and the gives and takes around oracles. We walk through some example oracles in gold pricing data and prediction markets. We finally wrap up with an interview with Jeff Rosen and Doug von Kohorn, founders at Rhombus, where we discuss their approach and solution to the oracle problem.
Topics:
- Faizaan's thoughts on the ETHDenver event
- How we should think about oracles
- The oracle problem
- What decentralization is from the oracle perspective
- Centralized oracles
- Cryptographic annotations
- What TLSnotary and Town Crier does
- Astraea by consensus
- Manipulation resistance
- What Rhombus is
- What makes them different from other oracle providers in the Ethereum ecosystem
- Examples of the kind of enterprise use-cases they see
- On providing the right price / data
- How prices of assets completely delisted affects what happens to smart contracts / things
- Underwriting insurance policies
- Some areas they're interested in that they think might require more transparency
- Their thoughts around working with prediction markets
- Difference between Chainlink and Rhombus
- How they're doing sales right now
- Their background
- What got them interested in the oracle space
- How they're funded right now
- What they're excited about for the rest of the year
- What the lighthouse oracle is and its use
Links:
Rhombus - https://rhombus.network/
Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/
r/progresspics - https://www.reddit.com/r/progresspics/
myfitnesspal - https://www.myfitnesspal.com/
Strava - https://www.strava.com/
The State of Decentralized Oracles - https://media.consensys.net/the-state-of-decentralized-oracles-df45bf0dc51d
TLSnotary - https://tlsnotary.org/TLSNotary.pdf
Town Crier - https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/168.pdf
Astraea: A Decentralized Blockchain Oracle - https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.00528
OpenLaw - https://openlaw.io/
Ethereum - https://www.ethereum.org/
Chicago Mercantile Exchange - https://www.cmegroup.com/
Coinbase - https://pro.coinbase.com/
Gemini - https://gemini.com/
Chainlink - https://chain.link/
ConsenSys - https://consensys.net/
Getcoin - https://getcoin.site/
We have Andreas M. Antonopoulos on, who we were really excited to talk to. With his books The Internet of Money, Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum, Andreas has been an amazing ambassador for the cryptocurrency space. On this episode, we get into a lot of interesting topics: What’s changed and surprised him since he published The Internet of Money, how Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrency project teams can learn from one another, fighting back against oppressive regimes with cryptography, opsec, how he sees 2nd layer solutions play out, and a host of other topics.
Topics:
- On his books
- What surprised him since he published his book, The Internet of Money
- How resilience technologies are
- Interesting capabilities of a 2nd layer technology
- How cryptocurrency project teams can learn from one another
- Difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum
Links:
Andreas Twitter: https://twitter.com/aantonop
Andreas Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aantonop
Mastering Bitcoin: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain/dp/1491954388/
The Internet of Money Volume 1:
https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Money-Andreas-M-Antonopoulos/dp/1537000454/
The Internet of Money Volume 2:
https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Money-Andreas-M-Antonopoulos/dp/194791006X/
Mastering Ethereum:
https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Ethereum-Building-Smart-Contracts/dp/1491971940/
Zac McClure joins us from TokenTax. I was really excited to talk to Zac because it’s great to learn about the kinds of professional SaaS tools that crypto entrepreneurs are building. This was a fun conversation. Zac has had an eclectic career prior to crypto. He’s been an investment banker, taught financial literacy to high school students, and worked on social investing platforms. He’s been heavily invested in getting people to understand finance and investing, giving them the knowledge to own their own path towards financial freedom. TokenTax is an extension of this by helping people, funds and other institutions easily manage their crypto taxes. We go over how the US and UK treat crypto taxes, wash sales and a whole bunch of other tax specific topics. With tax season looming around the corner, you will definitely want to listen to this one.
Topics:
- Zac's background and his work experiences
- How he would love to have crypto taxes be a gateway to financial health
- How he got people interested in crypto
- How 1031 Exchange works
- How wash sales work
- How he recommends crypto taxes be treated
- What fork means in cryptocurrency
- On being conservative and consistent
- How he established a meaningful fork
- The solution TokenTax provides
- How TokenTax is different from others
- How they generate revenue on a business model side
- On their vision
- How they decided which feature to build first when they first started TokenTax
- A feature that did not go as expected
Seeing interest in the security token side
Links:
TokenTax
Twitter - TokenTax
Twitter - Zac McClure
What happens when a vendor attacks a security researcher who points out security flaws in their software? On this episode, we talk about two white-hat security researchers who discover multiple vulnerabilities in a vendor’s software system. The vendor initially ignores their concerns until the FBI gets involved. It culminates in a physical attack by the vendor’s COO on one of the researchers. We look at all the details around the vulnerabilities, discuss common disclosure concerns and how the FBI has opened up a “Cyber Fusion” unit to act as a liaison between security teams and at-risk vendors.
Topics:
- Atrient has assaulted the security researcher who disclosed the vulnerability
- On reporting the vulnerability
- How the FBI got involved
- Vendor call with the FBI and the security researchers
- The Bug Bounty call
- The ICE Conference assault
- An email from Jessie Gill (Atrient COO)
Links:
Researcher Assaulted By A Vendor After Disclosing A Vulnerability
Shodan
Shodan wikipedia
Dylan on Twitter
Shodan Safari, where hackers heckle the worst devices put on the internet
We look at NVIDIA’s negative pre-announce, how they stopped blaming crypto and are seeing weakness across the board, especially on the datacenter side. We take a tangent on political risk associated with Huawei, and finally finish up by looking at the slew of predecessors of Bitcoin so the next time someone thinks they’re being clever by calling Bitcoin the Myspace of Crypto, you can list off the hundred or so predecessors and attempts at payment systems before Bitcoin.
Topics:
- NVIDIA's negative pre-announce
- Vikram and Faizan's thought on these articles:
- Cramer on Nvidia warning: ‘If you wanted to issue a call for why you should sell stocks, this is it’
- Long-Term Investors, Ignore the Noise in Nvidia Stock
- Why NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) Stock is a Buy
- NVIDIA's Margin Guidance Isn't As Bad As It Looks
- On political risk associated with Huawei
- Teaser about the slew of predecessors of Bitcoin
Links:
NVIDIA Updates Financial Guidance for Fourth Quarter of Fiscal Year 2019
Shareholder Letter
Cramer on Nvidia warning: ‘If you wanted to issue a call for why you should sell stocks, this is it’
Long-Term Investors, Ignore the Noise in Nvidia Stock
Why NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) Stock is a Buy
NVIDIA's Margin Guidance Isn't As Bad As It Looks
Princeton Bitcoin Book
We look at GitHub’s recent move to give non-paying users unlimited private repositories, and GitLab’s subsequent response. Additionally, we discuss DevOps and how teams can save money and improve deployment processes by implementing DevOps best practices.
Topics:
- GitHub offers free private repos
- What GitHub is
- How it was acquired by Microsoft
- On DevOps
- What DevOps is
- How companies do DevOps now
- On being good at DevOps
- What the goals are
- The techniques they used
Links:
GitLab - GitHub now offers free private repos for up to three collaborators
New year, new GitHub: Announcing unlimited free private repos and unified Enterprise offering
There are 3 public clouds left and we'll use all of them - Medium
Multi-cloud maturity model – GitLab Magazine – Medium
Twitter - Peter Todd
We discuss comments from the CFTC about developer responsibilities and liabilities. The CFTC posits that there are a few primary groups of users of blockchain networks: (1) core developers of the underlying software; (2) developers of smart contracts on top of the underlying blockchain; (3) miners who validate transactions; and (4) users who transact with the chain’s smart contracts. Their focus is primarily around (2), or the developers of smart contracts, and what responsibilities those developers have when writing contracts that fall in the jurisdiction of the CFTC. Is a smart contract developer who writes options contracts or futures contracts or prediction market contracts - those that the CFTC would call financial products - liable for the code they write? This was a really interesting conversation because it touched on notions of developer responsibilities and law. As the world moves more and more in the direction of software, how do we ensure that code that’s being written isn’t bad?
Topics:
- On Brian Quintenz's speech at a technology event
- Responsibilities of a core developers
- Miners that validate transactions
- Smart contracts
- Applications of smart contracts
- Applying old law to new products
- General analytical framework of prediction market
Link:
CFTC speech: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/opaquintenz16
We discuss our time at the CTO Summit at the NASDAQ Marketsite from a couple weeks back. This was a great conference, because technology leaders from startups to larger companies congregated to talk about managing and scaling tech teams. We talk about software process, distributed teams, how deployment is the main cause of all software failures, and a whole bunch of other interesting software development topics. Just as a warning, there isn’t a lot of crypto content on this one, but we thought our learnings from the conference were worth highlighting.
Topics:
- On the CTO Event
- Recaps
- Eliot Horowitz of MongoDB Inc.: The Right Amount of Process to Scale Your Engineering Team
- Maria Belousova of Grubhub: Building Highly Distributed Teams
- Michael Boufford of Greenhouse: Establishing a Management Cadence
- Bjorn Freeman Benson of Fresnel Research: Seventeen Things that Have Bitten Us But Shouldn’t Have
- Yvette Pasqua of Meetup: Engineering Leadership Through High Growth and High Change
- Angie Ruan of Nasdaq: The Nasdaq Financial Framework Transformation
- Rebecca Miller-Webster of DevMynd: Refactoring Trust on Your Team
- Johnny Ray Austin of Mapbox: Setting Your Team Up For Failure
- Mona Soni of Dow Jones: Is Your Team Built to Be Effective?
- Edith Harbaugh of LaunchDarkly: What I learned From Not Running 100 Miles
- Lena Reinhard of CircleCI: Better Communication for Stronger Teams
- Michael Ellison of CodePath.org: Improving Diversity in Tech by Transforming CS Education at Colleges
- Stacy Gorelick of Flatiron: Growing a Platform Team
- Jean Barmash of Komodo Health: How to Receive Feedback
- Ushashi Chakraborty of Mode Analytics: Run Engineering Meetings Using Improve Skills
-Kwame Thomison of Magnetic Inc.: Your Hiring Pipeline is a Product - Debbie Madden of Stride Consulting: How to Retain Developers. And When To Let Them Go
- James Kenigsberg of 2U: Standing on the Shoulder of Giants - Adapting Existing Technologies for Speed and Credibility
- Andrew Montalenti of Parse.ly: Fully Distributed & Asynchronous: Building Eventually-Coordinated Teams That Ship
- Randy Shoup of WeWork: Breaking Codes, Designing Jets, and Building Teams
Links:
Bjorn Freeman Benson - https://twitter.com/bjorn_fb
Johnny Ray Austin - https://twitter.com/recursivefunk
Lena Reinhard - https://twitter.com/lrnrd
Why we re-designed our engineering career paths at CircleCI - bit.ly/circleci-matrix
Debbie Madden - https://twitter.com/debbiemadden200
Andrew Montalenti - https://twitter.com/amontalenti
Randy Shoup - https://twitter.com/randyshoup
On this episode, we do a recap of our podcast episodes of 2018. We look at how the crypto market has changed since we launched our first episode (things other than just prices being lower) and also all the things that haven’t changed. This was a fun review of half a year of recording with a few glimpses of times ahead.
Topics:
Reflecting on our podcast this past year
Episode 1
- The QuantLayer Genesis Story, Crypto and Stock Market Comparisons, and Why Crypto Needs Reg FD
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/1-quantlayer-genesis-story-crypto-stock-market-comparisons/id1402142700?i=1000414325483&mt=2
Episode 2
- What’s a Crypto Investment Bank? A Conversation About Crypto Due Diligence With Crypto Launchpad CEO Adiraj Gupta
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/2-whats-crypto-investment-bank-conversation-about-crypto/id1402142700?i=1000414325484&mt=2
Episode 3
Crypto’s ICO Legal Landscape, the Attack on Verge, M&A in Crypto, and Better Treasury Management for Crypto Teams
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/3-cryptos-ico-legal-landscape-attack-on-verge-m-in/id1402142700?i=1000414357284&mt=2
Episode 4
A Discussion with Software Consultant Ben DiFrancesco on Building Great Blockchain Software
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/4-discussion-software-consultant-ben-difrancesco-on/id1402142700?i=1000415065447&mt=2
Episode 5
Crypto Teams Need to Communicate Better, and a New Segment: Big Drama in Smallcap Land (Zoin and Sumokoin)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/5-crypto-teams-need-to-communicate-better-new-segment/id1402142700?i=1000415464516&mt=2
Episode 6
Digital Ocean Versus Google Cloud, Polychain’s $1Bn Fund, a16z’s $300mm Fund, How to be a Shady Hedge Fund Manager, and 2nd Layer Solutions for Ethereum and Bitcoin
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/6-digital-ocean-versus-google-cloud-polychains-%241bn/id1402142700?i=1000415910825&mt=2
Episode 7
Bitcoin ETF & Alternative Energy ETFs, ZCash Incentive Structure, and How To Spot Bad Code in Your Crypto Investments
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/7-bitcoin-etf-alternative-energy-etfs-zcash-incentive/id1402142700?i=1000416414528&mt=2
Episode 8
Short Selling Explained, Tesla and How Controversial Shorts Work, and Nvidia and Bitmain
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/8-short-selling-explained-tesla-how-controversial-shorts/id1402142700?i=1000416862421&mt=2
Episode 9
Custody Solutions and Infrastructure, Family Offices, and How Funds Should Educate Their Analysts on Crypto
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/9-custody-solutions-infrastructure-family-offices-how/id1402142700?i=1000417280581&mt=2
Episode 10
More About Tesla (This Time About Going Private), Software Developer Personalities and Getting Tangled in IOTA
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/10-more-about-tesla-this-time-about-going-private-software/id1402142700?i=1000417715415&mt=2
Episode 11
Boston’s Growing Fintech & Crypto Scene, Telegram as a Crypto Platform and P2P Lending
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/11-bostons-growing-crypto-scene-mailbag-1-how-to-say/id1402142700?i=1000418146792&mt=2
Episode 12
Tesla Staying Public, How Amazon and AWS Made Angry Shorts Give Up and Why Rejection of the Bitcoin ETF is a Good Thing
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/12-tesla-staying-public-how-amazon-aws-made-angry-shorts/id1402142700?i=1000418644761&mt=2
Episode 13
An Alert Blitzkrieg: Cheap ETH Mining, MANA Land Estate Bug, EOS RAM Vulnerability, Stratis Node Vulnerability, Etherscan Vulnerability, Bitcoin Cash Vulnerability, and How Wall Streeters and Technologists Can Be More Lay-language Friendly
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/13-alert-blitzkrieg-cheap-eth-mining-mana-land-estate/id1402142700?i=1000419016588&mt=2
Episode 14
Turning A Bug Into A Feature: Bugsnag, Why You Shouldn’t Violate Open Source Copyrights (Hint: Your Coin Will Be Down 90% If You Do), The Bitcoin-Dev Mailing List, And Why Crypto UX Is So Bad
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/quantlayer-crypto-podcast/id1402142700?ls=1
Episode 15
Open Source as Revenue Driver: How Elasticsearch Uses Open Source for Revenue Growth, Tech Investing and Crypto, a Cautionary Tale of Bad Crypto Trading Psychology and Flash Crashes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/15-open-source-as-revenue-driver-how-elasticsearch/id1402142700?i=1000419883506&mt=2
Episode 16
Zaif Exchange Hack and How We Called It Two Months Ago and the Interplanetary File System (IPFS)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/16-zaif-exchange-hack-how-we-called-it-two-months-ago/id1402142700?i=1000420329661&mt=2
Episode 17
Crypto Legal Landscape with Kurt Watkins of MG Miller Intellectual Property Law: Securitized Real Assets and Intellectual Goods, Crypto Patents, Hard Forks and “Derivative Works,” Decentralized Exchanges and Alternative Trading Systems
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/17-crypto-legal-landscape-kurt-watkins-mg-miller-intellectual/id1402142700?i=1000420807788&mt=2
Episode 18
Crypto SaaS Spotlight: John Young With Ledj.io and Building Professional Crypto Research Tools
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/18-crypto-saas-spotlight-john-young-ledj-io-building/id1402142700?i=1000421326288&mt=2
Episode 19
Crypto SaaS Spotlight: Amy Wan, Founder and CEO of Sagewise and Building Crypto LegalTech Solutions
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/19-crypto-saas-spotlight-amy-wan-founder-ceo-sagewise/id1402142700?i=1000421924166&mt=2
Episode 20
ZRX & ESTC: A Tale of Exchange Listing Pops, the State of Crypto Reporting (It Sucks) and How You Can Make Money Being Contrarian, and How Monero (XMR) Sliced Up Transaction Fees With Bulletproofs
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/20-zrx-estc-tale-exchange-listing-pops-state-crypto/id1402142700?i=1000422824609&mt=2
QuantLayer - Episode 21
A look at Stablecoins, Tether and PwC
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/21-a-look-at-stablecoins-tether-and-pwc/id1402142700?i=1000423666435&mt=2
QuantLayer - Episode 22
Everything is Ded (Bitcoin, “Blockchain,” ICOs, Volatility) and Amazon Takes Over New York City
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/22-everything-is-ded-bitcoin-blockchain-icos-volatility/id1402142700?i=1000424132491&mt=2
Episode 23
Crypto Hangover and Market Downturn?: A Look At Semiconductor Market Cycles, NVIDIA Throwing Crypto Under The Bus, And What Nathaniel Popper Got Wrong In His Recent New York Times Article
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/23-crypto-hangover-market-downturn-look-at-semiconductor/id1402142700?i=1000424844720&mt=2
Episode 24
The Attack of the Attack Vectors: a 51% Attack on Vertcoin & the Demise of ASIC Resistance + a Social Engineering Attack on ETCDEV and npm Libraries.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/24-attack-attack-vectors-51-attack-on-vertcoin-demise/id1402142700?i=1000425249491&mt=2
Other links:
Substratum to trade ICO funds in order to maintain capital as ETH price drops - https://www.chepicap.com/en/news/6005/substratum-to-trade-ico-funds-in-order-to-maintain-funds-as-eth-price-drops.html
Newsletter — Build Blockchain Tech - https://www.buildblockchain.tech/newsletter/
Samson Mow on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/1077717355159900160
This episode is all about attack vectors in crypto. We look at a 51% attack on Vertcoin, and how ASIC resistance is turning out to be a massive security bug, not a feature. We also look at Ethereum Classic and a social engineering attack on the ETCDEV team. Finally, we discuss the event-stream attack which robbed crypto wallets that used that npm library, and what that means for open source governance.
Topics:
- ASIC resistance is a massive security bug, not a feature
- What ASIC resistance is
- Vertcoin is currently being 51% attacked
- What NiceHash is
- ETCDEV shutdown
- What ETC is
- Who ETCDEV is
- Event-stream situation
Links:
Vertcoin - MIT Digital Currency Initiative - https://dci.mit.edu/video-gallery/?tag=vertcoin
About NiceHash - https://www.nicehash.com/about
About Crypto51 - https://www.crypto51.app/about.html
Vertcoin is currently being 51% attacked - https://medium.com/coinmonks/vertcoin-vtc-is-currently-being-51-attacked-53ab633c08a4
On Dec 3, Igor put out the following statement - https://twitter.com/etcdev/status/1069625401515872256/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1069625401515872256&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsbtc.com%2F2018%2F12%2F04%2Fcrypto-bear-market-strikes-ethereum-classic-etc-development-group-folds%2F
Event-stream situation
Synopsis:
- https://github.com/dominictarr/event-stream/issues/116#issuecomment-441759047
- https://github.com/dominictarr/event-stream/issues/116#issuecomment-441749105
Dominic Tarr’s response:
- https://gist.github.com/dominictarr/9fd9c1024c94592bc7268d36b8d83b3a
Kate Sills - https://twitter.com/kate_sills/status/1067202990690291712
A look at the semiconductor market cycle, and how recent results from NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and AMD have spooked the tech market. We look at NVIDIA’s most recent conference call where they place all the blame on what they call a “crypto hangover.” We then look at two distinct predictions about this latest semi cycle, one from JAG capital, who got it completely wrong, and another from a Supply Chain magazine that got it completely right. We finish up with a teardown of a New York Times article by Nathaniel Popper titled “5 Reasons Cryptocurrency Prices Are Plunging Again” and what he got wrong. If you enjoy our podcast, please rate and review us on iTunes. Thanks.
Topics:
- Market downturn
- What NVIDIA is
- How earnings call work
- Examples of good non-street analyse questions
- Crypto hangover
- Semiconductor market cycle
- How slowing down of Nvidia, Texas Instruments, or AMD can affect the rest of the space
- A teardown of a New York Times article by Nathaniel Popper
Book:
Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money by Nathaniel Popper - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D8KFX9Q/
Links:
Earnings call transcript - https://seekingalpha.com/article/4222728-nvidia-corp-nvda-ceo-jen-hsun-huang-q3-2018-results-earnings-call-transcript
Where Are We in the Semiconductor Cycle? - JAG Capital Management - https://jagcapm.com/where-are-we-in-the-semiconductor-cycle/
For Semiconductor Sales Cycles, Winter is Coming - EPSNews - https://epsnews.com/2018/10/04/for-semiconductor-sales-cycle-winter-is-coming/
5 Reasons Cryptocurrency Prices Are Plunging Again - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/technology/cryptocurrency-price-drop.html
Estimated USD Transaction Value - Blockchain - https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd
We review the latest proclamations of Bitcoin’s apparent demise: (1) Axios’s report that Corporate blockchain and bitcoin interest is waning; (2) Galaxy Digital dumping their ICO advisory business; and (3) volatility drying up forcing traders to look for alpha elsewhere. We also look at Amazon’s expansion into New York City, right into our backyard.
Topics:
- Bitcoin is ded note
- Blockchain is ded
- ICO Advisory is ded
- Volatility is ded
- What Axios is
- Galaxy digital
- Who Galaxy is and what happened
- What a high watermark is
- How a reverse merger works
- Types of shells that exist
- What a Friday night news dump is
- Amazon takes over New York City
Links:
Bitcoin Obituaries - https://99bitcoins.com/obituary-stats/
Bitcoin Obituary Generator - https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituary-generator/
Corporate America's blockchain and bitcoin fever is over - https://www.axios.com/corporate-america-blockchain-bitcoin-fervor-over-fb13bc5c-81fd-4c12-8a7b-07ad107817ca.html
Galaxy Digital Announces Strategic Operational and Organizational Changes - https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/galaxy-digital-announces-strategic-operational-and-organizational-changes-700167182.html
Novogratz says BTC going to $20k again next year - https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/44d49f15-5617-4a1b-82d9-2f279e2051d4?search=novogratz&searchType=default
Digital Ocean Versus Google Cloud, Polychain’s $1Bn Fund, a16z’s $300mm Fund, How to be a Shady Hedge Fund Manager, and 2nd Layer Solutions for Ethereum and Bitcoin - https://medium.com/@QuantLayer/digital-ocean-versus-google-cloud-polychains-1bn-fund-a16z-s-300mm-fund-how-to-be-a-shady-326bab0d29fd
Pitfalls of Reverse Mergers Into Public Shell Companies - https://www.clm.com/publication.cfm?ID=24
Galaxy Digital LP Management's Discussion and Analysis - https://assets.ctfassets.net/rbgwch8v5pod/1Zvd5REU0sq8KQwM6i2I6a/09b2b567a7224e9d5f5b2eba2aa322f8/Second_Quarter_2018_Management_s_Discussion___Analysis__Galaxy_Digital_LP_.pdf
Streisand effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Bitcoin’s volatility is hitting its lowest level in two years, and it is forcing traders to shakeup their strategy - https://www.theblockcrypto.com/2018/11/13/bitcoins-volatility-is-hitting-its-lowest-level-in-two-years-and-it-is-forcing-traders-to-shakeup-their-strategy/
QuantLayer Crypto Podcast Episode 20 - http://quantlayer.libsyn.com/20-zrx-estc-a-tale-of-exchange-listing-pops-the-state-of-crypto-reporting-it-sucks-and-how-you-can-make-money-being-contrarian-and-how-monero-xmr-sliced-up-transaction-fees-with-bulletproofs
Amazon takes over NYC - https://d39w7f4ix9f5s9.cloudfront.net/4d/db/a54a9d6c4312bb171598d0b2134c/new-york-agreement.pdf
Bezos’ helipad comic - https://i.redd.it/7734crgsk6y11.jpg
A look at Stablecoins, centralized ones, decentralized ones, what they’re going to be used for and what kinds of risks might arise from them. We discuss exchange listings again, this time with Basic Attention Token getting listed by Coinbase, and finish up with a discussion on Tether.
Topics:
- What Stablecoin is
- Centralized Stablecoins
- What Fiat backed is and it's disadvantages
- What Exchange Traded Commodities backed is
- Decentralized Stablecoins
- What Crypto backed is
- Algorithmic
- Counterparty risk
- Non-crypto examples of things going bad due to counterparty risk
- Alerts
- Tether’s bank claims to be holding $1.8B backing Tether, the first such confirmation
- PwC advising on issuance of CRED, not just auditing
Links:
Alerts:
- https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/7ddd0158-5dac-43b9-99d5-13ad91979a81
- https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/33f56e0e-74fb-412b-8a73-5f764e3b93b6?search=stablecoin&searchType=default
- https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/41128557-5804-4f7b-bdca-4d645485aaaa?search=stablecoin&searchType=default
Coin Insider: https://www.coininsider.com/stablecoin-research/
A deeper look at stablecoins and USCDC: https://medium.com/circle-blog/a-deeper-look-at-stablecoins-and-usdc-dd27f48ba5a4
Stablecoins: Understanding Counterparty Risk: https://medium.com/gemini/stablecoins-understanding-counterparty-risk-241d55f0b392
We do a victory lap for alerting our users to the ZRX add to Coinbase before everyone else. We then get into a discussion of how exchange additions are similar to public market IPO first day trading pops, like what we saw in Elastic Search recently. We then talk about the state of crypto reporting, and how it has created a mix of pay-to-play bad actors, mainstream media outlets offering 10 year old FUD over and over, and well-meaning actors who create consensus views that smart, contrarian thinkers can profit on by taking the other side. We then do a deep dive on Monero and its recent success in transaction fee reduction from their implementation of bulletproofs.
Topics:
- Alert indicating symbol $ZRX (the 0x project) has been added to Coinbase
- Delisting that occurred in early January relating to Mysterium
- What the Mysterium Network is
- How MYST went down 25% over the course of 1 hour
- Why coins that get delisted get hit
- On doing delisting
- Why Coinbase is a big player
- Giving positive guidance when it comes to the roadshow
- Issues they see in mainstream and crypto-focused media
- Major reasons alternative energy did so well
- Why crypto media sometimes feels like an echo chamber
- What Monero is
- How Monero transactions work
- What zero knowledge proof is
- What range proof is
Links:
- Mysterium Network: https://mysterium.network/faq/general-questions/
- Geoff Golberg’s research:
- https://medium.com/@geoffgolberg/i-made-a-bet-with-ripples-cto-david-schwartz-1536b92a22fd
- https://medium.com/@geoffgolberg/when-bots-attack-af7f9f87b612
- https://medium.com/@geoffgolberg/when-it-comes-to-dealing-with-fake-bot-accounts-twitter-is-still-failing-a79d9ece5b5d
- Bitcoin Coursera course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency
- Monero Becomes Bulletproof: https://medium.com/digitalassetresearch/monero-becomes-bulletproof-f98c6408babf?__s=tgxgnsfkgdriwzmaykfn
- Ben DiFrancesco’s site: https://www.buildblockchain.tech/blog/
- Link to ben’s newsletter: https://www.buildblockchain.tech/newsletter/
- QuantLayer's Twitter: https://twitter.com/quantlayer
- QuantLayer's Website: https://quantlayer.com
- QuantLayer Episode 15: http://quantlayer.libsyn.com/15-open-source-as-revenue-driver-how-elasticsearch-uses-open-source-for-revenue-growth-tech-investing-and-crypto-a-cautionary-tale-of-bad-crypto-trading-psychology-and-flash-crashes
Amy Wan, Sagewise Founder and CEO joins us to discuss the smart contract LegalTech solutions they’re building at Sagewise. We go over her background, how she moved from the traditional legal space and into LegalTech, what smart contracts are, dispute resolution, and the tools they’re building at Sagewise to handle dispute resolution. Another episode of people building usable tools in this space.
Topics:
- Amy's controversial tweet
- Amy's background
- What Blockchain brings to the legal profession
- What Sagewise is
- Fundraising environment for Blockchain/smart contract entrepreneurs
- What Blokusign is
- The Blockchain platform Blokusign is built on
- The EOS project
- What a smart contract is
- How real estate tokenization works
Links:
- Sagewise: https://www.sagewise.io/
- Blokusign: https://www.blokusign.com/
- Amy’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/amyywan/status/1042627228863889410
- Sagewise Releases Alpha Version of Blokusign: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180917005156/en/Sagewise-Releases-Alpha-Version-Blokusign-Gmail-Integrated-Blockchain-Powered
John Young joins me from ledj.io. John worked at Capital One before starting his first two crypto Software-as-a-Service (or SaaS) businesses in early 2017: Spreadstreet and Cryptosheets. Both these services let users work with crypto pricing data in Google Sheets and Excel. Install a plugin, and you are good to go. Definitely worth checking out. I was excited to speak with John since he is running a crypto SaaS business for crypto research like us. We talk how he has been finding customers, who his customers are, other SaaS tools he uses for his business, and what kinds of data analysis tools he’s building at Ledj. His product is much needed in this space, and it was awesome to get his perspective on it. If you are a trader, investor, or researcher, this episode is worth listening to.
Topics:
- His background and what he did before Bitcoin
- How Spreadstreet came about
- The products he's building
- What made him decide to incorporate Cryptosheets
- Issues encountered by traders and investors with respect to pricing data
- Type of customer he has
- How customers find him and how he finds them
- Taking a year’s worth of payment upfront in crypto
- On Excel as a powerful program
- What they are currently doing on the web app side
- On Tech Stack hiring a development team
- Recommendations when hiring or looking for a team member in general
- Billing they use in SaaS Stack
- Other areas of research lacking in crypto now
- The reason they built Ledj
Links:
- Email - john.young@ledj.io
- Ledj
- Cryptosheets
- Spreadstreet
- Medium Cryptosheets
- Cryptosheets Templates
- Trading View
- Netlify
- Gusto
We talk with Kurt Watkins of MG Miller Intellectual Property Law. Kurt is a lawyer who works with startups and is heavily involved in the crypto space here in New York. We’re glad we were able to talk to Kurt because some of the most interesting things being done in this space are by lawyers. We talk about how he got into crypto, the Reg D offerings he’s working on (securitized real assets and intellectual goods), a utility token client he’s working with (a sort of “Ripple 2.0” project), how patents in this space work and why they aren’t so bad, hard forks and “derivative works”, and how cartographers back in the day put fake towns in maps and how that’s related to crypto. We also get into the differences between utility and security tokens, how founders can structure their offerings better, and the differences between Reg D and Reg A offerings. We also cover decentralized exchanges and alternative trading systems. If you are an entrepreneur or a lawyer interested in this space, you will find this action packed episode interesting.
Topics:
- How Kurt got interested in the Bitcoin/Blockchain space
- His role at MG Miller
- What a General Counsel does
- Types of projects he's working on
- Utility versus security tokens
- What a utility token is
- What a security token is
- The differences between Reg D and Reg A offerings
- Serious problems that stems from security tokens
- Decentralised exchanges and alternative trading systems
Links:
Kurt’s email: kwatkins@mgmillerllc.com
Kurt's firm: https://mgmiller.legal/
On this episode, Faizaan and I do a victory lap for calling the Zaif exchange hack over 2 months ago. We also a deep dive into IPFS - what it is, what problem it solves, how it works and how Cloudflare is getting involved in the space. We finally look at some alerts that came through our dashboard.
Topics:
- A victory lap for calling the Zaif exchange hack over 2 months ago
- Cloudflare IPFS
- The purpose of IPFS and how does it works
- What IPNS is
- Where data is stored
- Why interplanetary
- What Cloudflare do
- Alerts:
-Scam alert: Betvibe makes false claims
-TKeyCoin scam
-Transaction lost bugfix
-Bitcoin hedge fund records 10,000% returns
-India fighting fake drugs
Links:
- Podcast transcript for episode 5 - https://medium.com/@QuantLayer/crypto-teams-need-to-communicate-better-and-a-new-segment-big-drama-in-smallcap-land-zoin-and-8c36a624da6b
- Coindesk: Crypto Exchange Zaif Hacked In $60 Million Bitcoin Theft - https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-exchange-zaif-hacked-in-60-million-6000-bitcoin-theft/
- Zaif - https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000093.000012906.html
- Cloudflare goes InterPlanetary - https://blog.cloudflare.com/distributed-web-gateway/
- Alerts:
- Betvibe - https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/86ad01c4-dd7e-3d8b-8a04-1e79e1c413e6
- TKeyCoins scam - https://medium.com/@ICOEthics/tkeycoin-scam-fake-team-bfb635fea486
- Transaction lost bugfix - https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/f3b0144e-2524-42db-a647-75ebf93784fc?search=lost&searchType=default
- Bitcoin hedge fund records 10,000% returns - https://cryptobriefing.com/crypto-hedge-fund-records-10000-returns/
- India fighting fake drugs - https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/07aa95fd-7100-45a3-97db-001546f23fdb?search=oracle&searchType=default
- Non Tesla Elon news - https://coinidol.com/elon-musk-calls-for-help/
We explore the Elastic IPO by doing a deep dive into its SEC Prospectus. We look at their business model and risks, and how open source software has been a giant revenue growth driver for them. We then get into an interesting discussion around tech investing and how it’s related to crypto. We look at some alerts that came through our platform: a cautionary tale of a trader who lost his life savings by investing at the peak and trying to recover losses with Bitcoin Cash and Ripple, and how to avoid doing that by looking at trading psychology. We also look at a crypto flash crash and compare it with flash crashes in public markets.
Topics:
- Exploring the Elastic IPO
- Prospectus summary
- The "search" and the concept of "search"
- What "Net Expansion Rate" is
- Tech investing and how it relates to crypto
- Uber versus Magna
- Alerts:
- Bitcoin crash
- Attempt at fixing wallet syncing crash
- Crypto flash crash
Links:
- Elastic - Form S-1
- SeekingAlpha analyst's post on Elastic search
- Bitcoin Crash: This man lost hi savings when cryptocurrencies plunged
- Attempt at fixing wallet syncing crash - https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/d56b2357-abdb-46db-9280-45143591bdf6
- https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/6ad97baf-d64c-31f5-bd05-13db1366111e
- September 5 Flash Crash - https://medium.com/ironchain-capital/a-recap-of-the-september-5-flash-crash-98b41b046c60
- https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/7753c79e-4823-35c3-9acb-8e21439227aa
- Caching blockchains for fun and profit with Menlo Core
How do you turn a bug into a feature? On this episode, we talk about how we used Bugsnag to do just that. We then get into an interesting discussion around using 3rd party software applications to move software projects more quickly with less risk. We also highlight just how useful the bitcoin-dev mailing list is for learning about how the Bitcoin core team thinks about the protocol, and how their discussions underpin important considerations around scaling and network growth. We also look at a terrible case of UX in VeChain, how Google is adding Ethereum to BigQuery, how $800mm worth of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash moved out of a Silk Road wallet, and a very suspicious Bitmex short squeeze.
Topics:
- How great Bugsnag is
- How to use Bugsnag to find a feature
- Getting to the roots of a crypto projects
- Bitcoin-dev mailing list
- What testnet is
- VeChain alert
- CertiK AutoScan Engine
- Google adding Ethereum to BigQuery
- How $800mm worth of bitcoin and bitcoin cash moved from silk road wallet
- How does short squeeze work
Links:
- Crypto teams need to communicate better
- MIT License
- Bitcoin Dev Mailing List
- Testnet 3 Reest
- Blockonomics
- https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/0b08c219-e363-42a1-8be2-a1e8ba90e13c?search=mainnet&searchType=default
- TXN price stayed stable
- CertiK Autoscan Engine
- https://medium.com/certik/certik-autoscan-engine-53-of-the-top-500-tokens-by-market-cap-were-found-to-have-vulnerabilities-80697fc245af
- https://ambcrypto.com/binance-to-integrate-certiks-autoscan-to-their-exchange-platform/
- Google adding Ethereum to BigQuery
- Alerts
- https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/dda92d48-8342-4359-9115-a2ab8dee49b6?search=crash&searchType=default
- https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/34884f60-ea42-35bb-87f3-a3f204e944d5?search=pump&searchType=default&telegramEnabled=false
- https://app-alpha.quantlayer.com/dashboard/alert/c2168670-f055-4d37-9ff9-cfe3fb00250a?search=mainnet&searchType=default
We discuss the alerting platform we’re building for crypto investors and traders. We then cover how Ethereum miners are rolling in dough, and the gives and takes of Proof of Work. We talk about a few really interesting alerts that hit this week: a Land Estate Bug we found in Decentraland ($MANA), an $EOS Vulnerability that exploits RAM, a Stratis node vulnerability ($STRAT) that’s been around for almost all year, and a Bitcoin Cash ($BCH) vulnerability. We also talk about how the crypto space has really gotten a new wave of people interested in learning about how finance works, and what crypto teams will have to do to keep that interest going.
Topics:
- Major issue they have with the crypto market
- ZEC Sapling news
- Lightning Network updates
- Cheap ETH mining
- MANA land estate bug
- New EOS vulnerability allows to steal RAM resources directly from users
- Stratis node vulnerabilty
- Etherscan security vulnerability exposed by hackers
- Bitcoin core developer could have wiped bitcoin cash from existence
- How crypto has opened up people's eyes to how markets work
Links:
- Screenshot of ZEC Sapling and Lightning Network
- ZEC Sapling news
- Lightning Network updates
- QuantLayer's website
- Vikram's email
- Miner Says It Costs Just $152 to Mine One ETH
- MANA Land Estate Bug
- https://github.com/decentraland/land/commit/8e87fc3fee53dbc114d7b6d610ddfaa0913a1059
- https://github.com/decentraland/land/pull/93
- EOS Vulnerability Allows to Steal RAM Resources Directly From Users
- Stratis Node Vulnerability
- https://github.com/stratisproject/StratisBitcoinFullNode/commit/ef321fb3d98849ad03029c07f7805c78d15811e8
- https://github.com/stratisproject/StratisBitcoinFullNode/issues/1123
- Etherscan Security Vulnerability exposed by hackers
- Bitcoin Core Developer Could Have Wiped Bitcoin Cash From Existence
We re-examine the drama around Tesla, and discuss its similarities and differences with Amazon. We also look at ARK Invest’s Catherine Wood’s open letter to Elon Musk asking him to keep the company public. We cover why we think the Bitcoin ETF rejections are a good thing, and the additional activity we are seeing on our alerting platform.
Topics:
- Some thoughts on planning software projects up front, deploying early, and handling third party integrations early
- Is "deploy early, deploy often" a thing?
- Tesla drama returns
- Describing AWS and how AWS benefits its users
Catherine Wood's open letter of why Tesla should remain public - Bitcoin ETFs rejected
- Going through SEC logic
- Interesting alerts
- Seeing multiple chats calling for no price discussion
- VeChain token swap
- NANO launches charges, first prototype of IoT economy
- Lisk Mainnet launch imminent
- GitHub activity from Raiden
Links:
- QuantLayer Crypto Podcast #10
- Article by Steve Yegge at Amazon
- How the S.E.C May Pursue a Case Against Elon Musk and Tesla
- ARK Invest Weekly Newsletter
- An Open Letter Against Taking Tesla Private
- Elon Musk blog: Staying Public
- ProShares
- GraniteShares
- Direxion
- Great thread by Jake Chervisnky
- Hester Pierce
- Caitlin Long
- Two Things That Don't Mix Well: Bitcoin Rehypothecation And Chain Forks
- Andreas Antonopolous - Bitcoin Q&A: Why I'm Against ETFs
- Andreas Antonopolous - YouTube Channel
- Andreas Antonopolous - Twitter
- VeChain token swap
- NANO Launches charges, first prototype of IoT economy
- Nano Center - Nano initiated charger prototype
- Link Mainnet launch imminent
- GitHub activity from Raiden
We attended the Boston New Technology Fintech & Blockchain group event where we got to present our alerting platform to a couple hundred attendees. We discuss some of the other crypto projects we saw, including Button Wallet, which is a Telegram bot that lets users buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies. We also discuss p2p lending, and go through our first Mailbag, which covers answers to questions you all have, from crypto market questions to how to say no to a client. Enjoy.
Topics:
- On their presentation at Boston New Technology
- Their take on other companies who also presented
- Indeco Union: Social Capital - Funding platform for anyone to invest, and any company to raise capital, using security token
- Button Blockchain Technologies: Button Wallet - Multi-currency wallet and exchange in Telegram
- Adjoint - Empowers enterprises to achieve new levels of efficiency and control by delivering blockchain technology built for the financial industry
- Fasdraft - Combines transparency and intuitive field tools for banks and real estate professionals
- Wunderite - Collaboration tool for business insurance and risk
- OrbitCoin - Decentralized P2P Lending platform and credit network
- QuantLayer - Real-time streaming cryptocurrency market intelligence platform for investor and traders
- List of questions listeners have been asking:
- What are some of the headwinds against crypto right now?
- Can you use fundamental analysis to value Bitcoin or is it mostly just directional?
- How long does it take to add a new source to your paltform?
- Are you going to be doing ratings for coins/tokens? like Moodys or S&P?
- How is this different from the other crypto news tools out there?
- I'm a web developer. How is crypto development different from web development?
- What are the common mistakes you see founder/management teams make when working on their MVP?
Links:
- Boston New Technology - Meetup
- Boston New Technology - Twitter
- Chris Requena - Twitter
- Indeco Union: Social Capital
- Indeco - Twitter
- Button Blockchain Technologies: Button Wallet
- Adjoint
- Adjoint - Twitter
- Fasdraft
- Wunderite
- Wunderite - Twitter
- Peter Macdonald - Twitter
- QuantLayer - Twitter
- Vikram Ramakrishnan - Twitter
- Email: podcast@quantlayer.com
In this episode, we discuss a range of topics from Elon Musk’s recent tweets about taking Tesla private for $420 per share to the wide range of personalities amongst software developers. We also take a deep dive into the web known as the Tangle, where we look at its underlying technology to figure out what exactly is going on with IOTA.
Topics:
- Elon Musk's tweet on privatising Tesla
- How all current investors can remain with Tesla
- "Taking Tesla Private" blog
- How he arrived at the $420 number
- The SpaceX comment
- Coinbase scaling issues
- Thoughts on scaling
- Recommendations on scaling
- Talking about IOTA
- Some major issues with IOTA
- What IOTA can give you
- How IOTA transactions work
- Coordinator (centralisation)
- Tip selection attacks
- Unstable wallet
- Addressing reuse attack
- Developer personalities
Links:
- Elon Musk's tweet on taking Tesla private:
- https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776
- https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026890900885184514
- Taking Tesla Private (from Tesla's website)
- Quoth the Raven tweet
- Financial Times article
- Tesla finally put out press release
- Coinbase blog post
- IOTA
- Tweet about taking people's funds which were at risk into temporary custody through a snapshot
- IOTA lead dev attacking Sarah
- Newsletter with the updates
- QuantLayer Spotify
- iTunes
- QuantLayer Google Play
- QuantLayer Stitcher
- QuantLayer Libsyn
- Augur
In this episode, we talk about our experience at the Crypto Hedge Fund Summit in New York, and what we learned about custody solutions and infrastructure being built for institutional investors. We go over what a family office is and how they differ from institutional investors. We discuss how important custody is and why. We also break out a multi-point thesis for how funds should think about educating their managers and analysts on the crypto space.
Topics:
- QuantLayer's top three most popular podcast episodes
- AAPL hit a trillion dollar market cap
- Recap of Crypto Hedge Fund Summit
- Definition of a family offices into family member
- Family offices doing OTC trading of Bitcoin
- Crypto custody and infrastructure
- State of Blockchain Q2 report
- Traditional investing versus crypto
- Kinds of buckets people should care about
- Things you should do when running a crypto fund
- Real time auction versus high usage ETH contracts
- MobileGo in freefall after team member fraud
- Alexander Vinnik extradition request to Russia from Greece approved
- Top US banks have paid $243 billion in fines since 2008
- Wallet bug causes theft at Altex
- GH PRs referenced
- Scam wallets
Links:
- QuantLayer Email Campaign
- Keynote from Crypto Hedge Fund Summit 2018
- Trade Terminal
- SEC Rule in 2010/2011
- State of Blockchain Q2 report
- Internet Protocol Suite
We take a deep dive into shorting, what it is, how it works, why it works, why people short, what the psychology of shorters is and when shorting can go horribly wrong. We also talk about the bull and bear cases around Tesla, and how that’s tied to controversy and short selling. We also look at Nvidia, its IPO and the company’s gross margins and how that relates to recent news of a Bitmain IPO filing. We also consider the current browser wars as they relate to crypto and continue our discussion around some benefits of the Bitcoin 2nd Layer Lightning Network.
Topics:
- Short selling Bitcoin
- Mechanics around shorting
- What shorting is
- How shorting works
- Key things to get out from all the mechanics talk
- The reason people are bullish and bearish about Tesla
- Discussing a highly controversial stock
- The mindset of shorting
- Benefits of shorting in psychology
- Types of shorters and its examples
- Downsides of shorting
- How Nvidia trades
- How Nvidia relates to recent news of a Bitmain IPO filing
- Crypto browser wars: Opera versus Brave
- Reviewing some alerts
- Lightning network steady growth
- Fed chairman says cryptos have no intrinsic value
- Live congressional hearing on crypto
- $1B entered market in 1 hour
Links:
- How To Short Sell Bitcoin, And Why More People Aren’t
- S3 Analytics: TSLA Shorts Nearing the End of the Road
- TheStreet article: What to Know Shorting Bitcoin
- Crypto's 32-Year-Old Billionaire Mining King Considers an IPO
- Nvidia IPO filing
- If You Had Invested In NVIDIA Right After Its IPO
- Nvidia Gross Profit Margin
Vikram and Faizaan discuss the recent Bitcoin ETF filing by SolidX and VanEck, how it is reminiscent of the alternative energy ETF boom of the mid to late 2000s and also talk about what an actively managed ETF in crypto might look like. They also talk about ZCash’s incentive structure and founders reward, and developer incentives more broadly. They also discuss how crypto teams are leaking secret keys to Github, a missing deposit on Golem Network’s mainnet, and how to investigate bad code for your crypto investments.
Topics:
- What they've added to QuantLayer's platform
- Seven new exchanges for listening when they add and remove trading pairs
- Telegram client side filtering
- Bitcoin ETF filing with the SEC
- What a SEC filing is all about
- Investment objective
- The section on Bitcoin: It's history and how Bitcoin network works
- Specific industries that are useful in blockchain-focused applications
- OTC market in Bitcoin
- The section titled "Bitcoin Security and Storage for the Trust"
- The insurance they have on their Bitcoin
- Less interested in price tracking ETF funds and more interested in participating directly in the network
- Primary and other major issues with an ETF
- Coinbase announced they added 10 customers to their custody service
- Zcash and the founders reward
- What Eric Meltzer posted on the Zcash forum
- Arjun Balaji wrote a great piece on Zcash and incentives and the current debate
- Good incentives systems and bad incentives systems
- Ledger Live launch
- Reviewed some alerts that came in and talked about them
- $GNT (golem network)
- $REP AWS creds
- Less than half of ICOs survive 4 months
- Bancor hack
- Crypto price insurance
- Bittrex hack, even with 2FA enabled
- VeChain wallet released early
- Chinese hackers infect 1M computers to mine bitcoin, arrested
- Assassination plots on Vinnik & McAfee
- Algolia credentials
Links:
- SEC Filing
- List to all the comments
- Comment on accredited vs retail
- Someone commenting on Abraham Lincoln
- Someone who wants an SEC bailout of retail investors
- Someone on crypto being the future and bad grammar
- Bunch of these feel like “when moon, when lambo” type of comments:
- https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-cboebzx-2018-040/cboebzx2018040-167176.htm
- https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-cboebzx-2018-040/cboebzx2018040-167233.htm
- Angry post: https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-cboebzx-2018-040/cboebzx2018040-3958028-167098.htm
- Think Bitwise
- Coinbase Custody
- ZClassic by Rhett Creighton
- ZCash Forum
- Eric Meltzer
- Proposal to create a Zcash Ecosystem Fund directly funded by the Founder’s Reward
- Arjun Balaji
- Zcash and the Founder Incentive Trilemma
- Matthew Green
- Zcash Team
It’s been an action packed week of investor heavy news. Vikram and Faizaan discuss Polychain Capital’s one billion dollar SEC filing, and how you need one million dollars to invest in them. They also look at Andreessen Horowitz’s 300 million dollar fund launch and how they are thinking about good crypto projects. They go over the shady techniques that hedge funds engage in in order to juice their returns and what a high watermark is. They also cover some alerts that QuantLayer’s platform picked up, and get into a really interesting discussion around 2nd layer solutions for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Topics:
- Google Cloud migration to Digital Ocean
- Their bad experience with Google Cloud
- The reason they decided to move to Digital Ocean
- Investor market news in crypto
- Polychain Capital's one billion dollar SEC filing
- Andreessen Horowitz launched their $300MM investment fund
- An open letter from Chris Dixon
- Spencer Bogart talking about bitcoin/crypto prices being depressed due to forced selling by hedge funds
- What a high watermark is
- Some alerts that QuanLayer's platform picked up
-Crypto banned in India
-Increase in exchanged hacks (over $700 million)
-Bitcoin removes alert key
-Catching telegram announcements for VeChain token swap support
-The ‘official serious discussion’ that VeChain has - How ETH network has been taken up by 3 contracts
- First layer scaling solutions: Sharding
- Second layer scaling solutions: State Channel, Plasma, and Truebit
- What Lightning Network is
- Lightning network application
Links:
- Form ADV
- Fortune article where they interviewed Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder of Polychain
- NY Times article on the firm
- Kathryn Haun
- Kathryn Haun's bio
- Chris Dixon
- Chris Dixon's open letter
- Spencer Bogart
- Plasma
- Sharding
- Truebit
- Making Sense of Ethereum's Layer 2 Scaling Solutions
- Lightning Network
- Satoshi’s Place
Communication between crypto teams and their customers is often non-existent or lacking. Vikram and Faizaan talk about the current bearish sentiment of the market, and how exchanges and coin teams can better communicate with their customers. They discuss how exchanges can add predictability to their platforms through API versioning and how coin teams can flag important news they need to share with their coin holders. They also start a new segment called “Big Drama in Smallcap Land” where they dissect the persistent drama in the world of smallcap crypto coins. This segment’s drama surrounds Zoin’s newest lead developer not having development experience and Sumokoin, a strange tale of missed opportunity. Between market and technical talk, this episode is a good mix of all the things you love about crypto.
Topics:
- State of the market since the last podcast
- The SEC commentary on Ethereum and Bitcoin
- General crypto sentiments on Twitter
- The case moving beyond some of the big currencies (ICO and token markets)
- Trepidation around what is legitimate versus non legitimate ICO
- The big deal about Jack Dorsey's Square getting a BitLicense
- Adding Ethereum Classic to Coinbase
- Political ramifications of having both Ethereum and Ethereum Classic
- What they noticed about Zaif and Cryptopia's API
- Standardization of API formats
- Their thoughts on API versioning
- Open-source projects that do versioning: Ember
- Airdropping free NIX tokens to Zin coin holders
- Their thoughts on Zoin having a lead developer without development experience
- Vikram's experience in the Sumokoin chatroom
Links:
- Come check out our market intelligence platform
- Technical explanation of the DAO hack
- Conversation with Notsofast on Twitter
- Ember.js Guides
- Barry Silbert & Digital Currency Group
- Zencash
- Zcash
- Nix
Vikram and Faizaan are joined by Ben DiFrancesco of Scopelift, a software consultancy based in Philly. They talk about the Elixir programming language, how he finds clients and what software is like at bigger vs smaller companies. They also discuss the current state of crypto with the early internet, get Ben’s thoughts on the current scaling debate for smart contract platforms, and how big companies might benefit from wide crypto adoption. This was a great mix of topics and if you have any interest in software development or crypto.
Topics:
- Ben DiFrancesco's background
- The difference between a huge software company versus a small one
- Things he learned as a consultant
- How they met
- How he came up with daily crypto report
- The idea behind the product
- Additional features he's currently working on
- His personal opinion on Crypto World
- How he got involved in the crypto market
- Why he finds bitcoin fascinating
- His thoughts on the blockchain ecosystem
- Where he sees things heading in 3 to 5 years
- Component of coin recap: Elixir
- Their take on Elixir compared to Ruby and Rose's ecosystem
- Elixir's use cases in crypto
- On Scopelift and how he manages it
- His duties as a consultant
- How he started
- How he looks for clients
- His plans for Build Blockchain Tech
Links:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/bendifrancesco?lang=en
- Scopelift: https://www.scopelift.co/
- Daily Newsletter: https://coinrecap.io/
- Build Blockchain Tech: https://www.buildblockchain.tech/
- E-mail: ben@scopelift.co
- QuantLayer: https://twitter.com/quantlayer
- E-mail: vikram@quantlayer.com
QuantLayer founders Vikram and Faizaan cover how they got into crypto, how crypto markets compare with traditional stock markets, fraud in the ICO space, cross border capital formation, and more.
Topics
- Vikram’s background
- Faizaan’s background
- Advice for non-technical founders
- Why they decided to start a consultancy business
- What makes the cryptocurrency space interesting
- What a 10-K is
- What are companies obligated to report
- What are some steps that should be taken to communicate meaningfully with investors
- What’s cool about the cryptocurrency platform they are launching
- Risks in the cryptocurrency market
- What are some major problems when it comes to cryptocurrency
- Analogy as far as utility tokens go
- What one of the most powerful applications of cryptocurrency is
- What are other applications of cryptocurrency outside of finance
- Handful of questions that often gets asked when it comes to cryptocurrency
- How bitcoins are bought and stored
Vikram and Faizaan talk about their experience at Consensus, what they heard about the ICO space from the horse’s mouth - silicon valley lawyers themselves. They also cover the recent Verge hack, their thoughts around how coin teams can secure their treasury better, how background checks would be a great use case for blockchain, M&A in the crypto space and more.
Topics
- Their experience attending one of the Consensus events
- The current status of utility tokens
- The two types of Reg D
- The importance of talking to a law firm when doing ICO (Initial Coin Offering)
- Their thoughts on OnChain FX
- What happened to Verge
- What one needs to know about Verge
- The attack on Verge (time warp)
- How the time warp attack works
- Controversies surrounding Verge
- The concept behind the 5 algorithms
- Coin network hackings
- The importance of having a design for how funds are managed and how fraud is mitigated
- The rationale behind storing funds in a single wallet
- What a multi-sig is
- What Paradex is and how it works
- How confidential information should be privatized
- Cryptocurrency and how it is portrayed in the media
Links
- Filecoin
- OnchainFX
- Paypal
- Xoom
- Venmo
- Paradex
- Ebay
- Bittrex
- ZCash
- Bitgo
- Binance
- QuantLayer
Vikram and Faizaan talk with Adiraj Gupta, of the Crypto Launchpad, a crypto investment bank. We learn what exactly a crypto investment bank is and how they built $20 million in management in just 6 months. We also discuss how friendly New Zealand regulators are towards crypto, how family offices are getting into crypto, and what the OTC or over-the-counter market looks like for Bitcoin.
Topics
- What the Family Office Conference is all about
- What Crypto Launchpad is and how it works
- Their internal diligent process when taking a client on
- His background and how he got involved in the space
- Where he sees the whole capital formation idea heading
- Countries they are operating in right now
- Their current state of diligence research
- Exchanges they are working with
- Challenges they are currently experiencing
- What their scaling plans are
- Key factors involved when analysing an ICO (initial coin offering)
- Risks they are taking on from a legal standpoint
- How much is structural versus technical in terms of diligence
- How he thinks the diligent process will change as schemes get more sophisticated
- How he sees his business progressing
- His thoughts on the OTC (over-the-counter) market
- Other projects he’s looking into
- How people can get in touch with him
Links
Crypto LaunchPad
GitHub
Friendship
QuantLayer