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We've heard it over and over again, Covid-19 has plunged us into a crisis like none other we’ve experienced in our lifetime. Although it is primarily a public health issue, it is also having a major impact on the global economy and financial system. Many businesses have been forced to shut down sparking debates on whether this is supply or demand shock. Wall Street proclaims that any increase in economic activity is a good sign. However, Jim Bianco, President and Macro Strategist at Bianco Research, says a return to 90% of pre-crisis level will still not be enough to recover. Bianco Research is a Chicago-based firm that provides research and analysis for institutional finance. Jim started to take serious notice of the Covid-19 outbreak back in January. Since then he has been sharing his views on the long- term, macroeconomic consequences of the pandemic. He brings an enormous amount of clarity and insight into this issue.Topics covered in this episode:Jim’s background on Wall Street and how he transitioned in

In this inaugural post-interview chat, Friederike and Sebastien discuss their recent interview with Arweave Co-founder and CEO, Sam Williams.Moving forward, these conversations will be released every week on Substack. Subscribe to never miss an episode at https://epicenter.rocks/substack

The internet was originally created as a platform to communicate freely, but it soon became a place where people could be monitored, controlled, and censored. 98% of content on the internet is deleted every 20 years. More surprisingly, based on a Twitter study, a third of links change their content fundamentally or are removed completely, within three months of their creation. Arweave is a new data storage protocol that enables economically sustainable permanence for the very first time. Built on a blockchain-like structure called the blockweave, one of the applications on Arweave is what they have coined “the permaweb”. This is an array of data, websites, and decentralised applications, to which anyone can contribute and maintain. This system provides an incentive to store your data without compromising your privacy, solving one of the key issues facing the current web.Sam Williams, Co-founder & CEO of Arweave, talks about the technical solution they have built, the economic model around endowment, and t

Today, half of the internet is built on top of Amazon S3. Although the cloud has allowed Internet applications to scale, centralized infrastructure means less control over one's own data. And when it goes down, so does half of the internet.Sia CEO David Vorick is back on the podcast to talk about a new product recently released by their team: Skynet. Skynet builds on Sia and enables web applications to be developed and deployed over a decentralized data storage infrastructure. David also shares his thoughts on Trusted Setups, why he thinks they're "busted," and how the crypto industry can create better and more secure Zero-Knowledge primitives.Topics covered in this episode:- What is Skynet and how it builds on Sia- Skynet compared to IPFS/Filecoin- The need for a decdentralized data marketplace- An example of how the Sia network works- What are trusted setups and how they are used- Threat models in trusted setups and what can happen when they break- The alternative to trusted setups and solutions for the fut

Decentralized exchanges have been around for some time, and various designs have been attempted. Although they provide a number of privacy and censorship resistance benefits, one of their pitfalls has been transaction throughput. However, recent advancements in Zero-Knowledge Proof-based scaling solutions is creating a new breed of scalable DEXes.Loopring is a non-custodial DEX protocol that achieves high-throughput trading. It leverages ZK-Rollups to achieve upwards of 2,000 transactions per second with on-chain settlement. As an order book-based exchange, it sets itself apart from other DEXes like Uniswap and the Gnosis Protocol. However, users should keep in mind that the orderbook is centralized. Daniel Wang, Founder & CEO of Loopring, talks about why they decided to focus on DEXes and their plans beyond the current version 3.0.Topics covered in this episode:Daniel's background and how he became involved in cryptoLoopring's 2017 token sale and why they needed to return funds to investorsThe concept of

Julian Assange, the creator of WikiLeaks, is currently in a maximum-security prison in London facing extradition to the US for violating the Espionage Act. This charge came, among other things, from exposing US war crimes in Iraq. This has put journalists around the world under fear of being prosecuted for exposing the truth. Opinions on Julian Assange are divided, unsurprisingly. But we can assume that a conviction would set a dangerous precedent for journalism, free press, and freedom of speech. John Shipton, Julian's father, is seeking support from the crypto community to help fund Julian's legal defense. Harry Halpin, CEO of Nym Technologies and friend of Julian's, teams up with John to discuss how a conviction could jeopardize the values of censorship resistance, permissionless innovation, and privacy.Topics covered in this episode:John and Harry's backgrounds and their connection to Julian AssangeThe extradition case against JulianHow the outcome of the orders could impact the Ethereum communityThe nega

Genesis Mining is a leading hash power provider offering cloud cryptocurrency mining as a service. They offer mining for Bitcoin, Zcash, Dash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero and serve over 2 million users in 100+ countries. The company was formed in 2013 and saw tremendous growth in its seven years in operation. In the mining business, process optimization, controlling costs, and vertical integration are key. Crypto prices, difficulty adjustments, hardware availability – all can have an impact on profits. Co-founder & CEO Marco Streng shares how he built his company from the ground up, and is now expanding beyond crypto to address other profitable markets in cloud computing.Topics covered in this episode:Marco's background and how he started Genesis MiningThe biggest challenges they faced in the early daysThe company's cost structures and vertical integrationWhy they got into cloud computing and the applications of GPUsThe major shifts in the mining industry since they were foundedThe ecological footprint

Aave is building a suite of non-custodial DeFi tools that allow users to earn interest on their deposits and borrow assets. Earlier this year, Aave released its Flash Loans feature, which is drumming up a lot of excitement in the ecosystem. Flash Loans have a number of applications like executing liquidations or refinancing and require no collateral on the part of the borrower. As we have seen since they were introduced, they have also been used by malicious actors to exploit vulnerabilities in some DeFi protocols. Nevertheless, this powerful tool is an important “money lego” component that enables various new use cases. Stani Kulechov, Aave Founder & CEO, and Marc Zeller, Integrations Lead, explain their vision for the Aave protocol as an essential part of the DeFi ecosystem.Topics covered in this episode:Stani and Marc's backgrounds and how they became involved in cryptoMarc's previous project, Variabl, and why it failedHow Aave came out of EthLendSwitching from an OTC model to a pooled modelYield hacki

The Plasma Group was a not for profit research group focussing on layer-2 scaling on Ethereum. Optimism is a new Public Benefit Corporation that builds on the lessons of the Plasma research and is implementing Optimistic Rollups. This solution scales Eth 1.x and offers near-instant transaction finality on Ethereum, while providing over 100x transaction throughput. Jinglan Wang and Karl Floersch, co-founders of Optimism, explain the transition to this new entity and its goals moving forward.Topics covered in this episode:Jinglan and Karl's backgrounds and how they came to work togetherHow the Plasma Group and all of the Plasma research evolved into OptimismFunding of Optimism through Gitcoin, and the lessons learned from donation fundingWhat are Optimistic Rollup and how they achieve scalingHow to make an Optimistic Rollup chainOptimistic Rollups compared to other scaling solutions like Truebit, sharding and zkRollupsHow Optimistic Rollups fit within the Eth 2.0 roadmapThe role of an aggregator and how to beco

AZTEC Protocol is a protocol that enables private transactions on Ethereum. At its core, AZTEC is an Ethereum contract, otherwise known as the AZTEC Cryptography Engine. The protocol uses a zero-knowledge proof system, allowing users to effectively create shielded representations of tokens, which can then be sent and redeemed for the underlying token. CEO and CTO, Tom Pocock and Zac Williamson have plans to build AZTEC into a fully functional DeFi stack with which all kinds of trades, swaps, and financial operations will be possible, with privacy.Topics covered in this episode:How Tom and Zac met and founded AZTEC ProtocolWhat AZTEC is and what problem is solvesHow AZTEC enabled transactions work in practice from a user perspectiveThe challenges of making DeFi systems like MakerDAO fully privateHow ERC-20 tokens could be issued as private tokensThe AZTEC trusted setup ignition ceremonyZKPs for privacy vs scaling solutionsGrowing the privacy ecosystem and getting people excited about privacyThe security guaran

Ryan Sean Adams is the Founder of Mythos Capital, a crypto fund and staking provider for “big fish” stakeholders. He also writes the popular DeFi newsletter, Bankless. In addition to providing excellent insights about the ecosystem, Bankless takes a very practical approach to leveraging DeFi. Ryan shares strategies and encourages readers to complete action items to utilize the full potential of decentralized finance and become bankless. He also hosts a podcast by the same name with David Hoffman.Topics covered in this episode:Ryan's background as a tech entrepreneur and how he got involved in cryptoLaunching ​Mythos Capital and the thesis behind this fundThe importance of becoming “bankless” to preserve self-sovereigntyWhat good analogies we can use to describe DeFi and the use of clear terminology to describe cryptoassetsThe power and advantage concentrated in centralized exchangesTrustless nature of Ethereum vs. BitcoinThe role of nation-states in the DeFi ecosystem as it continues to growThe idea that “Eth

In another of our bonus episodes recorded at EthCC in Paris, we caught up with Jason Goldberg, CEO and Founder of Pepo and Ost, and James Dyer, Co-founder and Head of Product at Decrypt. At the time of recording Decrypt were about to announce they were launching their own token that rewards audience engagement, built on Ost technology. We chatted to Jason and James about this relationship, the problems solved by these monetization models, the link between Pepo and Decrypt tokens, and DeFi, and what the future holds for media and tokens.Topics covered in this episode:Background of Jason and JamesDecrypt's affiiation with ConsenSysThe issues and problems being solved with the respective monetization modelsThe levers Pepo are using to ensure users trust the platform and promote growth in the ecosystemThe reasons Decrypt chose Ost to build their platform onThe different components of the Ost toolkit and how these are leveragedThe technology involved with getting tokens to sponsor a 'season'How Pepo and Decrypt ma

What will the World look like when capital is no longer scarce? In his book, World After Capital, Albert Wenger makes the case that technological progress throughout the ages (foraging, agrarian, industrial) brought a change in scarcities. As society transitions from the Industrial Age to the Age of Knowledge, scarcities will also shift – human attention will become our most valued scarce resource.Albert Wenger is a Managing Partner at the VC firm Union Square Ventures. A graduate of Harvard and MIT, he holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology. Before joining USV, he founded several companies in the aughts, and was the President of del.icio.us when the company was sold to Yahoo! in 2005.Topics covered in this episode:His motivations for writing “World After Capital”How the properties of near-zero marginal cost and universality are unique to the digital ageHuman attention as the primary scarce resource in the Knowledge AgeThe shift towards the Knowledge Age and the role of capital in the futureCovid19 as a cata

We caught up with Joseph Lubin, Founder of ConsenSys, at this year's EthCC. It has been over a year since he last came on the show, and we wanted to get his take on what has been happening in the ecosystem since then. We talked about the ConsenSys reorganization, interoperability between public and permission blockchains and the opportunities there, government-backed stable coins and the possibilities of nation-states building their own, DeFi and the phenomenal growth in the ecosystem, his predictions for 2020, and thoughts on the challenges facing Eth2.0.Topics covered in this episode:A look back on the past year since we last had Joe on the showThe ongoing ConsenSys reorganistaionJoe's views on the recent Twitter discussion that “Ether is the ConsenSys token”Interoperability between public and permission blockchains and the opportunities thereGovernment-backed stable coins and the possibilities of nation-states building their ownThe evolving naratives around EthereumJoesph's vision on how DeFi compliments t

In this episode we are joined by David Hoffman, Chief of Operations at RealT, a company which tokenizes realestate assets into security tokens. He is also well known for numerous pieces he has written on Ethereum and DeFi and is co-host of the POV Crypto podcast. Hear us as we talk about his writings, how tokenizing real estate assets works, Bitcoin on Ethereum, the feedback loop problem and effects of the USD in DeFi, and a debate on whether Ether is an asset.Topics covered in this episode:What RealT is and how tokenizing real estate assets worksUsing the Uniswap protocol for tradingThe thesis behind David's “Defining Ether as an Asset” postThe crypto-economics economics of Bitcoin on Ethereum (tBTC, wBTC)The feedback loop problem in DeFiThe effects of the USD price on volatility in DeFiThe argument that Ether is a ”triple-point asset”The utility value of EthereumRebutting the argument the Ethereum will eat all of the world's valueEpisode links: RealTDefining Ether as an AssetEthereum is an Emergent Structur

This week we have a special episode on the entire globe's most talked about topic, the Corona Virus. We are joined by guest Ryan Selkis, CEO of Messari. Ryan was one of the first people in the space to start talking about Covid19 and has been very vocal on this subject on Twitter and his newsletter since the crisis began in January. We discuss how this virus has become so deadly and the current health and economic conditions, containment and protecting yourself, how the markets, crypto and startups have been affected, and what is yet to come.Topics covered in this episode:How Ryan become so interested in the Corona VirusThe current global health and economic impact of Covid19The provisions Ryan is making personally and on a company levelMessari's plans for virtual events over the coming weeksA deeper look into the global financial impact of Covid19What does this all have in store for startupsThe stimulus being put in place in the US and its monetary effectsThe current state of the marketsThe long term effects

This episode was recorded at the third annual Ethereum Community Conference in Paris last week and we were joined by Gonçalo Sá, Co-founder of ConsenSys Diligence, Jérôme de Tychey, President of Ethereum France, and Cassidy Daly, Token Designer at Centrifuge. We discussed the issues surrounding centralization and DeFi in token governance, the security complexities of composability attacks like the ones we saw recently which leveraged flash loans, and of course, the coronavirus.Topics covered in this episode:Gonçalo and Cassidy discuss their talks at the EthCC eventThe current points of interest around centralization in DeFiDefining ecosystem decentralization guidelinesIssues with token governance in DAOsSecurity complexities of comparability attacks and the recent flash loansHow the Ethereum community is improving response times to attacksEthCC, hugs and coronavirusEpisode links:Ethereum Community Conference 3EthCC - TwitterJérôme de Tychey: “Opening Speech” at EthCCJérôme de Tychey: “Closing Speech” at EthCC

We are joined by founder of TQ Tezos, Jacob Arluck. TQ Tezos is a company that works to advance the Tezos ecosystem by creating open source software and other public goods. It's been over two years since we last did an episode about Tezos and this was a good refresher on how that project is shaping up. We hear about the decentralized and permissionless nature of the Tezos infrastructure, the protocol development of Tezos, and how TQ is working to make Tezos more accessible.Topics covered in this episode:Decentralized nature of Tezos development and the teams that make up the ecosystemWho is funding Tezos protocol developmentPermissionless nature of the Tezos architecture and governance mechanismHow TQ is working to make Tezos more accessibleThe impressive number of development languages and issues around interoperability and comparabilityMichelson – the stack-based DSL (domain-specific language) and the shift towards Michelson 2.0The types of applications being built on TezosThe role of the Tezos Foundation a

Joe Lallouz is the CEO of Bison Trails, who provide staking infrastructure for a variety of PoS blockchains. They have built a really impressive system for deploying nodes across multiple cloud services. In light of the $25m recently raised by Bison Trails, Joe shares their vision to build a better PoS ecosystem for everyone, the types of customer they run validators for, and the cutting edge stuff they're working on in terms of deployment, redundancy and key storage. We also hear their view on infrastructure centralization in PoS, protocol improvements, and Bison Trails' role with Libra Association.Topics covered in this episode:How Bison Trails got started and their vision to build a better proof of stake ecosystem for everyoneThe types of customer they run validators for and their approach to improving the productThe networks they support and their approach to adding new networksBison Trail’s technical infrastructure design and the cutting edge stuff they're working on in terms of deployment, redundancy an

Income tax. Not a particularly exciting topic, especially when it comes to paying them. But something we all need to deal with nevertheless. We are all (or at least should be) aware of what our personal tax returns entail. But are you fully aware of the implications holding crypto can have on your tax filing?Clinton Donnelly, Founder of CryptoTaxAudit has done hundreds of tax returns for US citizens, both domestic and expatriated, and is an expert when dealing with filing crypto and Bitcoin taxes. He is also an Enrolled Agent, which means he meets the requirements of the IRS to represent taxpayers. Clinton has seen it all, and there's no situation too complicated. In our interview with Clinton, we explored the ins and outs of crypto taxes for US citizens – it was an information-rich conversation. US taxpayers who hold crypto will learn what they need to report to the IRS, as well as the practical, concrete actions one can take to make sure they are complying with the Tax Code of the United States of America.T