Ep28: Does Crypto Need Rules?

I’ve been off the air for a while with Consensus Network through the holidays. The good or the bad news is that there isn’t a lot of movement in bitcoin prices.

Infrastructure continues to grow and projects continue to develop throughout crypto winter.

Even though prices aren’t moving dramatically, the technology and laws around it are. 

My guest today is at ground zero for all of those developments.

Her name is Amy Wan. The last time I interviewed her, it was for Wealth Formula about real estate crowdfunding. She’s consistently been at the forefront of technology and the next big thing.

She is now using her law skills to work with, of all things, smart contracts. This conversation was very interesting. We top off the show with some important news as well so make sure to listen to it.

Amy Wan is Founder & CEO of Bootstrap Legal, which automates real estate syndication legal documents, and co-founder and CEO of Sagewise, a legaltech blockchain company. She hosts The Law and Blockchain Podcast (a show on The Bitcoin Podcast Network) and has authored the Bloomberg Law practice guide to ICOs and Lexis Nexus' Private Equity practice guide. Previously, she was a Partner at a boutique securities law firm and General Counsel at a real estate crowdfunding platform. Amy founded Legal Hackers LA, which programs around the intersection of law and technology; was named one of ten women to watch in legal technology by the American Bar Association Journal in 2014 and one of 18 millennials changing legaltech by law.com in 2018; and was nominated as a Finalist for the Corporate Counsel of the Year Award 2015 by LA Business Journal.

Amy has also worked in international regulatory and trade policy at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of Transportation. She holds an LL.M. in Public International Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science, a JD from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, and a BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Southern California.

Shownotes:

• Amy Wan’s journey to cryptospace

• Smart Contract

• What does does Sagewise play?

• Governance & EOS

• On-chain & Off-chain governance

• Amy’s take on Hedera Hashgraph

• Twitter.com/amyywan

• Sagewise.io

Ep27: Crypto 202 with Chris Coney

We are in a bear market with cryptocurrency. There is no doubt about that. How long will it last? I have no idea.

However, one day a bull market shall return just as the dotcom’s did after the bubble burst in the late 90s.

Then we will see the blockchain versions of Amazon and Apple skyrocket in value. In the meantime, it is winter.

Now is the time where you learn about projects and buy them at a steep discount. The truth is that the vast majority of these cryptocurrencies will never recover. But the ones that do will come back with a storm.

So how do you spend your time if you want to be part of this eventual boom? You learn. You become part of the conversation.

You can’t do that if you don’t speak the language. That’s where my guest this week on Consensus Network really shines. He is one of the best teachers in blockchain I have yet to encounter.

His name is Chris Coney and he will help you make sense out of a lot of fundamental but difficult concepts in distributed ledger technology.

Chris Coney

Founder of the worlds first online school to teach courses on Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchains.

Shownotes:

• Chris Coney’s background

• When did Chris start to buy

• Chris’s take on Bitcoin Maximalism

• EOS

• Proof of stake & proof of work

• Cryptoversity 2.0

• How the Crypto Revolution is Bigger than the Internet

• Search “the cryptoverse” on YouTube for more of Chris

Ep25: Nic Carter and the REAL Value of Blockchain

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people are overusing the word blockchain. In fact, a recent article I read exposed twelve publicly traded companies that reaped huge valuation rewards simply by adding the word “bitcoin” or “blockchain” to their name.

Now listen, this technology that is coming through is special. I have no doubt about it. But even actual blockchain projects may not have a real reason to include distributed ledgers.

All of this, of course, is going to flush out over the next decade. Our job, in the meantime, is to understand the technology as well as we can and to try to understand for what it is best suited.

My guest this week on Consensus Network has a special set of skills. His ability to think at both a macro level and as an analyst evaluating projects is impressive.

His name is Nic Carter and he is going to help us navigate through the rapidly changing world of distributed ledger technology.

Before joining Castle Island, Nic Carter worked for Fidelity as their first cryptoasset analyst, where he devised research perspectives on public blockchains.

He is the cofounder of Coinmetrics.io, a platform devoted to demystifying on-chain data and bringing transparency to the industry. He has written extensively about token holder rights, cryptoasset governance models, and public blockchains as political institutions.

Nic blends pragmatism with a data-driven approach in determining how entrepreneurs can best interface with these new institutions.

He holds an MA in Philosophy from the University of St Andrews and an MSc Finance and Investment from the University of Edinburgh.

Shownotes:

• Nic Carter’s background

• What’s is Coin Metrics

• How is Coin Metrics different than bits activity and other competitors

• Castle Island

• Blockchain, blockchain, blockchain…

• When will the impact of institutional interest reflect the market?

• Learn more about Nic Carter

• https://medium.com/@nic__carter

• coinmetrics.io

Ep23: How to Scale Bitcoin with Samson Mow

If you follow the crypto world like I do, it seems almost a little bit ridiculous sometimes with all of these personalities threatening each other and massively volatile digital asset prices.

My friend Teeka Tiwari calls these conflicts the “nerd wars” and thinks we should ignore the noise. I tend to agree in the larger scheme of things. However, I do think that this kind of chatter hurts the evolution of this asset class.

In times like these it is important to understand that underlying all of this stuff is a world-changing technology—blockchain—and it was all started by one white paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto.

That white paper gave us one of the most elegant ideas of the century. It’s called bitcoin. Over time, it is my opinion that we will see bitcoin evolve into something of tremendous significance.

However, we aren’t their yet and part of the issue is that we are still in the early stages trying to understand how we can unleash all of its potentials.

As a payment system, it has run up against some challenges with regard to scaling. How do you keep this elegant system intact while making it something that can be used for everyday transactions?

This question ultimately led to a major schism in the bitcoin community in August of 2017 which led to the split between bitcoin and bitcoin cash.

I have been trying to get someone to intelligently speak about the issues surrounding the scaling of bitcoin and I was fortunate to find one of the brightest minds in the field, Samson Mow from Blockstream. Listen now to hear how he thinks bitcoin should be scaled.

Samson Mow

is Blockstream's CSO and Pixelmatic's CEO. Blockstream is the leading provider of blockchain technologies, on the forefront of work in cryptography and distributed systems. Samson founded Pixelmatic in 2011 to creating engaging games that are truly social and encourage new connections to be made.

Previously at BTCC, one of the largest bitcoin exchanges and mining pools in the world, Samson's role as COO was to oversee the day-to-day operations of the company and directly manage the exchange and mining pool business units. Previously, Samson was a director of production and executive producer at Ubisoft, where he spearheaded expansion into Asian markets for web, social, and mobile games. Samson oversaw ongoing development and live operations of the cross-platform (web and iOS) MMO strategy game "Might & Magic: Heroes Kingdoms" in Asia, along with the social games "Castle & Co" (Facebook, mixi, Naver) and "The Smurfs & Co" (Facebook, mixi). "The Smurfs & Co" is Ubisoft’s most successful social game to date, reaching over 10 million users through organic growth. Prior to Ubisoft, Samson was in charge of business development and operations at Sitemasher, a Vancouver based startup developing a SaaS platform for building websites and apps. Sitemasher was the winner of the 2008 Blue Sky Innovation Excellence Award from Microsoft and was later acquired by Salesforce.com for US$20 million and rebranded as Site.com.

Samson holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Simon Fraser University in Canada. As a veteran of the game industry, Samson regularly features as a speaker and panelist in conferences such as GDC and CGDC.

Shownotes:

• Samson Mow’s background

• “Bitcoin is like a tank, or an aircraft carrier”

• Lightning Network

• What does Blockstream do?

• Liquid Network

• Bitcoin, not blockchain

• Blockstream.com

Ep21: The Conservative Investor’s Case for Bitcoin

One of the favorite words in crypto-Twitter these days is “Institutional”. What does that even mean? What is the big deal about these institutional investors coming in and why in the world do we care?

There has been big money in the crypto markets for a while in the form of hedge funds, family offices, and wealthy individuals—all of which tend to have a greater appetite for risk than say a pension fund or a University endowment. The latter are more conservative because their primary objective is to not lose money. Crypto certainly is a good place to do that as we have seen in the past few weeks.

So why would Yale University’s endowment lead the charge into diversifying into blockchain? Why are other Universities following suit?

Well, the issue is that there is risk in participating in this technology but there is also risk in not participating. Say for example an endowment put 1 percent of its assets into blockchain (still a lot). If that one percent went down to zero, which is highly unlikely, the overall effect on the portfolio would be negligible.

On the flip side, if that one percent returned 1000 percent over two or three years, which absolutely could happen, that small risk would lead to noticeable improvements in the overall yield of a fund. This is what you call an asymmetric risk profile and cryptocurrency is the quintessential example of that.

Frankly, as an individual, I have small investments in dozens of projects for the very same reason. Certainly, there are some that I have greater conviction in that I consider less risky, such as bitcoin, that I am willing to buy a little bit more of, but the vast majority of alternative coins out there are still quite risky in my humble opinion.

This week’s podcast features an interview with Kim Snider. Kim comes from the traditional financial world where she was an expert in options trading. After a successful career, she retired. However, seeing this asymmetric risk profile opportunity was enough to get her back in the game. In this interview, she will tell you why you should invest in bitcoin even if you have no clue how it works.

Kim retired at 47, sold her investment firm and in 2011 moved to South Carolina, with her husband and dogs, built a polo farm and planned to live happily ever after ... 

And all was going according to plan, until crypto came along.

Most people think cryptocurrency is too risky for a run of the mill portfolio. Kim believes the risk is in NOT investing in cryptoassets.

Motivated by the cascade of bad advice she saw pouring out all over the Internet, Kim un-retired to create SANE CRYPTO so thoughtful investors can take advantage of the unique, possibly once-in-a-lifetime upside cryptocurrency can provide, while simultaneously diversifying and protecting the portfolio against inflation and financial crisis.

Shownotes:

• Kim Snider’s financial background

• How did Kim lose all her money

• Kim approaches crypto as a traditional asset class

• Kim’s advice for her typical audience

• Her projection of the next 2-3 years

Ep19: Hunter Horsley with Bitwise Management on Buying the Market

There is blood in the streets of blockchain and I won’t be surprised if there is more. 

I suspect that it will get worse before it gets better. This whole thing started out with a consolidation and an uncharacteristically low volatility in crypto. 

The question was whether it was going to break up or break down. For those of us looking solely at the macro picture, the involvement of institutions and the potential for an ETF made us believe things were going to break for the better.

In the meantime, the technical guys, the guys who just look at the charts, were calling it the other way. Tyler Jenks, who was on this show just a couple of weeks ago called this sell-off. But he also believes it’s going down towards $1000 before we are out of the bear market.

Maybe he’s right. For better or worse, we shall see. The interesting thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of these guys who called this sell-off and still see it heading south are, overall, very bullish on bitcoin. Tyler thinks after the sell-off it will head up into mid-six figure territory. 

In other words, what we are seeing here is a very psychological event that really has no fundamental reason. Sure there was the bitcoin cash hard fork and the threat from Faketoshi about dumping one million bitcoin but that shouldn’t drive billions out of the market should it? 

It’s all emotion and automation at this point. A lot of people program stop losses to lock in their profits so when the price starts drifting down, their bitcoin automatically gets sold off. You saw that a lot around $6000. Below that is the abyss. Very few people planned for it so the price is in free fall.

It’s important in times like this to understand, though, that this is not the first time bitcoin and crypto have been pronounced dead. It’s happened multiple times before. This time, there is institutional infrastructure built for this thing to succeed in the long run so the likelihood of “death” is really very small in my estimation.

Furthermore, underlying all of this volatility is a new technology that will have seismic effects on the world. If you believe that, you may still believe that bitcoin prices will be over $100,000 per coin over the next five years. I am in that camp.

If that’s the case, does it matter if you bought in at $6500 or $3500? Either way, you would do quite well. I know it’s hard to think rationally when your brain tells you to run away but that is what separates good investors from the bad ones.

Warren Buffett said, “Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful.” There is a lot of fear out there right now so, again, it might be time to get greedy pretty soon.

That said, if you don’t want the hassles of dealing with wallets and trading platforms, there is a way to just buy the market when you think it’s bottomed out or stabilized. 

It’s through a company called Bitwise Management. This week on Consensus Network, I interview HunterHorsely, cofounder and CEO of bitwise. 

If you’re thinking about taking advantage of this crash but don’t know where to start, don’t miss this episode.

By the way, it was recorded before this crash so never mind the talk about the stability of the markets!

Hunter Horsley

Previously Product Manager on monetization at Facebook and Instagram. Received his BS in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Shownotes:

• Hunter Horsley’s background

• Big institutes getting into cryptocurrency in 2018

• What’s holding back the investors

• What’s the cost if I DON’T invest

• Bitcoin vs everything else

• Bitwise

• Hunter’s typical investors

• Bitwiseinvestments.com

Ep18: Institutional Interest in Cryptocurrency with Michael Moro

It used to be that bitcoin was just for quirky libertarian computer scientists but somehow the virus has spread gradually into big money.

How something that was never advertised goes from nothing to over $100 billion market cap in 10 years and ushers in an entirely new digital currency asset class is mind-boggling to me.

So, it is particularly interesting to people who watched it happen. Michael Moro has been involved with bitcoin trading before the infamous Mount Gox hack and has watched it mature to where it is today.

In this episode, he will take us on that journey and use that perspective on the future of institutional interest in cryptocurrency.

Michael Moro serves as the CEO of Genesis, responsible for planning and executing the strategic vision for the firm. Previously, he served as Chief Operating Officer for Genesis and was responsible for overseeing all day-to-day operations. He started his career at Citi in investment banking, covering financial institutions and finance companies. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and holds FINRA Series 7, 24, 63 and 86/87 licenses.

Shownotes:

• What caused the bitcoin cash fork problem?

• hashing power’s effect on price

• Michael Moro and Genesis

• When did the institutional money come in?

• What is Genesis about?

• The benefit of over-the-counter trading platforms

• The new Genesis Capital: a lending platform

• More on Michael Moro

• Genesistrading.com

• Genesiscap.co

Ep16: Leveraging your Crypto with Fiat Loans: Zac Prince of BlockFi

As bitcoin, blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies become more mature, you will see a lot of the same financial models as you do for traditional assets like real estate and stocks—models that have been around for a long time.

For example, the earliest recognized futures trading exchange was the Dojima Rice Exchange established in 1710. And now, the Chicago Board of Options Exchange sells bitcoin futures contracts.

Not too far in the future, you will see bitcoin treated like any other commodity in the financial markets. Whether that’s good or bad for crypto can be argued. But the irony is that the very system to which bitcoin was a response, the system run by the big banks, will also lead to its value exploding over the next few years.

Obviously lending is a big part of the traditional finance world and it has already become an industry within the world of digital assets. One of the trailblazing companies leading the charge in this area is BlockFi—which has the support of many of the big players in the blockchain space like Mike Novogratz of Galaxy Digital.

If you are a crypto HODLR like me, you are going to love this discussion. It’s a great option to hold on to something tax free and still use it keep your money moving into other investments.

Zac's experience includes leadership roles at multiple successful tech companies. Initially in adtech, where he was a part of two successful acquisitions, Admeld (Acquired by Google) and Sociomantic (acquired by DunnHumby). Prior to starting BlockFi, he led business development teams at Orchard Platform, a broker dealer and RIA in the online lending sector, and Zibby, an online consumer lender. He graduated Cum Laude from Texas State University with a BA in International Business and minor in Spanish.

Shownotes: 

• Zac Prince’s background

• Journey to Blockfi

• Borrow against the value of your crypto asset

• Best rate available

• The ultimate protection

• Coming soon: Become a lender

• Blockfi.com