Unconfirmed: Insights And Analysis From The Top Minds In Crypto

Kyle Samani, managing partner of Multicoin Capital looks ahead to 2020 based on how the space changed from 2018 to 2019. He talks about how the space has matured and become more heterogeneous, when developers choose to build on platforms other than Ethereum and when they stick with it, and how the uncertainties about Ethereum 2.0 are affecting developers' choices. We discuss which chains he's most excited about now, why there's such a huge amount of competition in the smart contract space, and how the competition will shake out between the projects such as Cosmos and Polkadot that aim to connect other chains. He also covers why he isn't that excited about work being done in Bitcoin, why 2019 wasn't the year of Lightning and why 2020 will be the year of lots of small success stories. Thank you to our sponsors!  eToro: https://www.etoro.com/ Crypto.com: http://crypto.com/ Kelman Law: https://kelman.law/ Episode links:  Kyle Samani: https://twitter.com/KyleSamani Multicoin Capital: https://multicoin.capit

Laura recounts the tale of how she got SIM swapped, what mistakes she made, and what she did to secure her accounts and get her phone number back. She also reveals how, despite having shored up her security years before, she actually was still vulnerable. She also reveals the results of an investigation her mobile carrier did into what happened and what steps the mobile carrier is taking to deal with phone hijackings. Plus, she gives tips on how you can protect your cryptocurrency, financial accounts, data and more from SIM swapping attacks. Due to the holidays, there's no news recap this week, but if you are with friends and family whose digital lives need some securing, then follow the tips in this episode together. Thank you to our sponsors!  CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed  eToro: https://www.etoro.com Crypto.com: http://crypto.com/ Episode links:  My tweet about being SIM Swapped: https://twitter.com/laurashin/status/1182855237020901377?s=20 Unchained episode on protecting yourse

Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer of Coinshares, talks about how the emergence of Bitcoin fits within the larger technological and financial shifts of the last decade, how crypto can integrate privacy into our digital lives and how political shifts, ideology and meme culture have helped drive adoption. We also cover her stance on shitcoin minimalism/Bitcoin maximalism, what other areas of crypto development are interesting to her, and why she thinks the development of Libra is different from the trajectory of crypto. She also discusses what she thinks the effects of the Bitcoin halving will be in 2020, and makes a few predictions for 2020 and beyond.  Thank you to our sponsors!  Crypto.com: http://crypto.com/ CipherTrace: https://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed  eToro: https://etoro.com/ Episode links:  Meltem Demirors: https://twitter.com/Melt_Dem CoinShares: https://coinsharesgroup.com/ CoinDesk on Meltem as one of 2019's Most Influential: https://www.coindesk.com/most-influential/2019/meltem-dem

Larry Cermak, director of research at The Block, looks at the macro trends in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, including what can be gleaned from derivative data, why many hedge funds are shorting Bitcoin and what has happened to trading volume since the summer. We also cover how the exchanges vary in terms of liquidity and target customer, which types of traders are active now, and which exchanges other than the Bitwise 10 also have real volume.  Finally, Larry talks about what amount of real value is being settled on the Bitcoin blockchain and how this compares to gold and other cryptocurrencies.   Be sure not to miss the Unchained shop! https://shop.unchainedpodcast.com/ Thank you to our sponsors!  CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed eToro: https://www.etoro.com Crypto.com: http://crypto.com/ Episode links:  Larry Cermak: https://twitter.com/lawmaster The Block: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/ Hedge funds short Bitcoin: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/48268/hedge-funds-were-short-bit

Writer Nathaniel Rich discusses his recent long-form Vanity Fair article diving into what really happened with the Quadriga exchange debacle, what Gerald Cotten’s past really was, his relationship to his business partner Michael Patryn and who Patryn really was. He talks about their history with so-called high-yield investment programs, their falling out at Quadriga, what Cotten really did with the funds on the exchange, and the three main theories for what Cotten did, including a scam that ended in death, what Rich calls the “royal fuckup” and the final one, the Mastermind Theory.  Thank you to our sponsors!  CipherTrace: https://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/ eToro: https://etoro.com/ Episode links:  Nathaniel Rich: https://twitter.com/NathanielRich Vanity Fair article: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/the-strange-tale-of-quadriga-gerald-cotten Bloomberg on Michael Patryn’s identity:  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-19/from-fraud-to-fintech-quad

For Black Friday, Alex Adelman, cofounder and CEO of Lolli, talks about how, with the Lolli browser extension, shoppers can earn back, on average 7%, but as much as 45%, of their purchases in Bitcoin at over 750 merchants, including Walmart, Bloomingdales, Gap, Barnes & Noble, Postmates, Sephora, Sonos, Hotels.com and more. He talks about how about 50% of Lolli users appear to be new to Bitcoin, how 30% are women, which is likely much higher compared to other crypto companies, and how Lolli makes its money (hint: not off your data). He also covers where people can use Lolli, whether it will offer other cryptocurrencies and the announcement of their partnership with Alibaba, which the Chinese company later denied.  Thank you to our sponsors!  Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/ eToro: https://www.etoro.com CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links:  Lolli: https://www.lolli.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/trylolli Alex Adelman: https://twitter.com/alexadelman Lolli announcement: htt

Steven Becker, president and chief operating officer of the Maker Foundation, discusses the MakerDAO system's transition to multi-collateral Dai, what benefits it gets from having multiple collateral types, why it started with Brave's BAT, and how the Dai savings rate can lower risk for users. We also talk about what incentives current users have to transition to Dai, given that the Dai savings rate is just 2% while Sai holders can enjoy interest rates over 5% in Compound and dYdX, and how the MakerDAO system plans to try to incentivize people to move over. Plus, we talk about how to manage such a transition in a decentralized project and how the system might someday add tokenized real-world assets.  Thank you to our sponsors!  CipherTrace: https://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed eToro: https://www.etoro.com/ Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/ Episode links:  MakerDAO: https://makerdao.com/ The launch: https://blog.makerdao.com/multi-collateral-dai-is-live/ Steven Becker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-

This episode features an email interview with Kuma, the pseudonymous administrator of HKmap.live, a site showing a real-time crowd-sourced map of protests in Hong Kong, which Kuma believes is the first Hong Kong protest organization to accept cryptocurrency. Although I read his answers, Kuma talks about the controversy around the rejection of the app from the Apple App Store, why HKmap.live started accepting cryptocurrencies, why they chose those particular cryptocurrencies, and what the site does with the funds. We also discuss decentralization and how the Hong Kong protesters use this as a guiding philosophy, what practices he follows in terms of communication and finances to be able to keep protesting, and what improvements he thinks crypto businesses and entrepreneurs need to make. Thank you to our sponsors!  CipherTrace: https://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/ eToro: http://etoro.com/ Episode links:  HKmap.live: https://hkmap.live/  HKmap.live on Twitter: https://twitte

Wolfie Zhao, Asia editor at CoinDesk, details how Jihan Wu ousted his cofounder Micree Zhan at the Bitcoin mining giant Bitmain last week, how he justified the coup at a staff meeting the next day, and how these tensions have actually been brewing for quite a while. He also discusses how Wu was able to remove Zhan despite the fact that Zhan was a larger shareholder, whether or not the other shareholders were aware of Wu's plans, and how Zhan plans to take some unspecified legal actions next. We also cover the general company reaction to the coup, how some compared it to Steve Jobs returning to Apple, and the competitive pressures Bitmain faces as it and a competitor attempt to IPO in the U.S. Thank you to our sponsors!  Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/ eToro: https://www.etoro.com CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links:  Jihan ousts Micree: https://www.coindesk.com/bitmain-turmoil-co-founder-and-director-micree-zhan-ousted-from-management Transcript of Bitmain meeting after Micre

Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer of the Human Rights Foundation, explains why he believes China's new pro-blockchain stance could turn out to be a blunder for the country and why this could lead to a red pill/blue pill moment that gets Chinese citizens interested in Bitcoin. He also talks about how the country could use a digital yuan as financial leverage in other countries, and why he's skeptical of the Chinese government's claims that anonymous transactions will be possible in the currency, called DCEP. We also talk about how wary citizens around the world should be as more societies go cashless, how corporations are starting to self-censor due to China's financial leverage and what the connection is between financial freedom and free speech.  Thank you to our sponsors!  eToro: https://www.etoro.com Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/ CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links:  Alex Gladstein: https://twitter.com/gladstein Human Rights Foundation: https://twitter.com/HRF China

James Ferguson, CEO of Immutable, the creators of Gods Unchained, talks about how the video game recently doubled its number of users. In early October, after a winner of a Hearthstone tournament said, "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" in an interview, had his winnings revoked and was banned from the game for a year, Gods Unchained offered to pay the player, Blitzchung, the amount of his winnings, plus invited him to play in its first tournament next year. Ferguson describes what happened next, ranging from a DDOS attack on Immutable's servers to some American University students making a similar pro-Hong Kong message, getting banned by Blizzard and switching to Gods Unchained. He talks about the benefits of decentralization and how the incident has gotten more true gamers (not crypto enthusiasts) interested in Gods Unchained.  Thank you to our sponsors!  CipherTrace: https://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Crypto.com: http://crypto.com/ eToro: https://www.etoro.com Episode links:  Immutable: htt

Jonathan Levin, the cofounder and chief strategy officer of Chainalysis, describes how the blockchain analytics firm helped the IRS identify the administrator of the largest child porn website in the world, which ultimately led to the arrest of the administrator, Jong Woo Son, and 337 site users across 38 countries. The work also led to the rescue of 23 minors from their abusers. He describes how the site used Bitcoin, how they used Bitcoin transactions to identify the users of the site, and how law enforcement worked with exchanges. We also discuss what impact privacy technologies could have on similar investigations going forward, as well as Levin's perspective on the overall utility of Bitcoin despite it being used for illicit activity. Thank you to our sponsors!  CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unchained Crypto.com: http://crypto.com eToro: http://etoro.com Newsletter:  Get Laura’s newsletter on the top crypto stories of the week’s plus a preview of exclusive podcast content! Signup Here: http:/

From DevCon 5 in Osaka, Japan, Deborah Simpier, COO and cofounder of Althea Network, describes how this decentralized internet service provider works, what problem it's trying to solve, and how it uses Ethereum. She describes how neighbors provide each other with internet access, and how they pay each other automatically on pay-as-you-go plans using a stablecoin. She also covers how she came to found Althea, what challenges she faced in explaining how it worked to her non-crypto neighbors,  and Althea's plans to expand to other areas, including urban areas and Nigeria.   Thank you to our sponsors!  Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/ eToro: https://crypto.com/en/index.html CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links:  Althea Network: https://althea.net/ Deborah Simpier: https://twitter.com/DeborahSimpier Case study on Clatskanie: https://althea.net/clatskanie-case-study Deborah’s talk at ETH Berlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD1tB0UFx78 https://breakermag.com/how-mesh-networks-a

Heads up, everybody! We are launching a weekly news recap, so stay tuned after the interview to find out about the top stories in crypto this week! (Links below.) Zachary Fallon, principal at Blakemore Fallon and former SEC staffer, explains why the SEC penalty against Block.One, which raised $4 billion in a yearlong ICO, got a penalty of just $24 million and didn't have to register EOS tokens as securities. He also discusses how this differs from the Kik case, what we can learn from another SEC order this week against Nebulous and what other gray areas remain for potential token issuers who may want to sell to U.S. citizens. We also go over the Crypto Rating Council, and what significance those ratings could have on the way they are regulated, if any. Thank you to our sponsors!  eToro: https://www.etoro.com Crypto.com: https://crypto.com CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links:  SEC press release about the Block.One settlement: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2019-202 SEC Order r

Nick Tomaino, general partner of 1confirmation, discusses his firm's second fund of $45 million, announced this week, how prospective LPs have changed from 2017 to 2019, and what types of projects 1confirmation is interested in. He also reveals why he doesn't believe Libra will be meaningful in the long-term, what he thinks the top DeFi trends are, what impact Ethereum's scaling issues could have, and what other protocols the fund has invested in. Plus, he explains how the firm decides whether to invest in companies or tokens when there is a choice. Thank you to our sponsors! eToro: https://www.etoro.com CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links: 1confirmation: https://www.1confirmation.com Nick Tomaino: https://twitter.com/NTmoney https://thecontrol.co/1confirmation-fund-ii-f42192a9646b https://fortune.com/2019/09/25/1confirmation-crypto-investing/ https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-venture-firm-1confirmation-announces-new-45-million-fund https://thecontrol.co/thoughts-on-faceb

Jacob Franek, cofounder and COO of Coin Metrics, discusses why daily transaction fees on Ethereum have surpassed those on Bitcoin, what daily transaction fees reflect generally about a blockchain, why this change appears to be driven by demand for Tether on Ethereum, and what types of transactions people are using Tether for on Ethereum. We also cover Bitcoin vs. its forks — Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision — and whether or not the latter two are becoming medium-of-exchange coins as they hoped to be, why they're being used more for data storage and what kind of data is being stored there.  Thank you to our sponsors! CipherTrace: https://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode notes: Coin Metrics: https://coinmetrics.io Jacob Franek: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-franek-b9865039/ ETH daily transaction fees surpassed those of Bitcoin: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9

Nic Carter, partner at Castle Island Ventures, discusses the ways in which cryptocurrencies could weaken the state, how they're already providing an alternative to central bank currencies for people in economies undergoing hyper-inflation. He describes why Bitcoin is inherently political, which other coins he views as legitimate and whether coins should always aim to be money or other types can exist. Plus, he explains why he isn't optimistic about Libra and why Facebook should have pegged the value of it to the USD.  Thank you to our sponsor! CipherTrace: https://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links: Nic Carter's recent Medium post on Bitcoin as a revolutionary currency: https://medium.com/@nic__carter/a-most-peaceful-revolution-8b63b64c203e Nic Carter: https://twitter.com/nic__carter LocalBitcoins interview on Unconfirmed: https://unchainedpodcast.com/localbitcoins-on-how-bitcoin-trading-compares-across-the-world/ Unconfirmed interview with Dante Disparte of the Libra Association: https://unc

Yan Liberman, cofounder at Delphi Digital, explains why Bitcoin dominance is back up at 70%, more than double its low at 33% at the height of the crypto bubble in early 2018, why a crypto bear market has a positive effect on Bitcoin and who is putting money into the space now. He also discusses how metrics involving Bitcoin's unspent transaction outputs, or UTXOs, affect price moves, why scaling isn't necessarily so important for bitcoin's price — but is for ether's price — and why the number of developers isn't always correlated to price. Plus, we cover how developments like the launch of Libra will likely affect Bitcoin.  Thank you to our sponsor! CipherTrace: https://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links: Delphi Digital: https://www.delphidigital.io Yan Liberman: https://twitter.com/YanLiberman Fred Wilson blog post on crypto: https://avc.com/2019/09/some-thoughts-on-crypto/ Pushback on Fred’s post: https://twitter.com/fredwilson/status/1169322053008314368 Electric Capital report on developer

Ryan Zurrer, formerly chief commercial officer and director at the Web 3 foundation and former principal and partner at Polychain Capital, discusses his recent proposal for a new DAO, reviving one of the most notorious experiments in crypto history. Zurrer explains the way it works, some of the new technologies, such as SourceCred, that he thinks could make a new DAO better than the original, what problem he wants to solve with the DAO, and how it would work. He also talks about why he believes that if the DAO had survived, that the due diligence in the space would be far higher than it was during the ICO craze, and why he thinks that the architecture of the DAO he's proposed will not violate U.S. securities law.  Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/ CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links: The DAO white paper: https://github.com/the-dao/whitepaper Ryan Zurrer: https://twitter.com/rzurrer SourceCred: https://sourcecred.io/ CoinDesk article on the recently pr

Joerg Platzer, owner of Room77, a bar in Berlin that has accepted Bitcoin since 2011, describes how patrons who wanted to pay with Bitcoin originally had to type long Bitcoin addresses into their laptops, how people's interest in Bitcoin correlates with the markets and how the demographics of the Bitcoin users have changed over time. He discusses why the bar discourages users from sending their Bitcoins from Coinbase, Circle and BitPay, how crypto companies can surveil their companies more than banks do, and how they impose U.S, laws on other jurisdictions. He also talks about the Lightning Network point-of-sale device that they're using, how what he believes to be the first routed Lightning Network payment occurred at Room77, and how surprised he by the number of people eager to pay via Lightning. Plus, he reveals which other coins he is open to, and which ones he is not.  Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/ CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links: Room77: ht