MoneyNeverSleeps

This week I’m joined by guest co-host Mai Santamaria, who is the Head of the Financial Advisory Unit for the Department of Finance in Ireland. Mai and I met in February 2018 at a meeting of the Irish Blockchain Expert Group which later became the industry group now referred to as Blockchain Ireland.

She’s one of the most helpful people I know and always has a uniquely incisive insight or two on what’s going on at the crossover of finance and emerging tech when she and I catch up. Mai originally featured on episode 5 of MoneyNeverSleeps back in 2018, she made a cameo on our 200th episode last year, she’s a Techstars mentor, and has received a ton of shout-outs from Eoin Fitzgerald and me on this podcast over the years.

In this episode, Mai and I riff on where crypto exchange Binance goes from here after pleading guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act in the US and being fined $4.3bn, with co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zao stepping down. We also look at the new crypto-friendly Argentinian president, Javier Milei, and what he might do with dollarization and crypto adoption, and then finish up with a mind-opening counterpoint on Ethereum co-founder Vitalk Buterin’s new manifesto.

STORIES COVERED:

Binance CEO Resigns, Part of $4.3 Billion Settlement With US (Sporting Crypto, 27-Nov-23)

Everyone Needs a Manifesto (CoinDesk, 28-Nov-23)

My techno-optimism (Vitalik Buterin, 27-Nov-23)

Elon Musk Sees A Bright Future For Argentina Under Its New Pro-Bitcoin President (Binance Square, 21-Nov-23)

Argentina Has a New Pro-Bitcoin President—Who Is Javier Milei? (Decrypt, 20-Nov-23)

LINKS:

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This week’s episode is from a session Pete Townsend hosted with Alex Tapscott, author of ‘Web3: Charting the Internet's Next Economic and Cultural Frontier’ (Harper Collins). Alex and Pete were joined by venture investors Justin Swart from BITKRAFT Ventures and Sterling Campbell from Blockchain Capital.

In this chat, Pete asked Alex to share his thoughts on what to expect next from those building in web3. Following this, a conversation ensued with Alex, Justin, and Sterling on the critical need for accessibility in technology, the future of web3 user growth, the role of gaming in web3 adoption, alignment of value and protocols, the movement towards decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) and the future of blockchain protocols.

PANELISTS:

Alex Tapscott - Author of Web3: Charting the Internet's Next Economic and Cultural Frontier (and ‘Blockchain Revolution’), Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at Ninepoint Partners, a Toronto-based alternative investment manager and Founder at Blockchain Research Institute

Justin Swart - Principal at BITKRAFT Ventures, a global investment platform specializing in Synthetic Reality: the space where our physical and digital worlds converge. Driven by video games and gaming technology, Web3, and AI. BITKRAFT’s portfolio includes Epic Games, Discord and Immutable.

Sterling Campbell - Investor at Blockchain Capital, partners to crypto builders since 2013, with investments including Techstars grad Arweave, Aave, Coinbase, Kraken and OpenSea.

TIMESTAMPS:

02:12 Alex Tapscott's Journey and Vision for Web 3

03:23 Justin Swartz's Gaming and Investment Background

04:27 Sterling Campbell's Career Transition to Blockchain

06:11 Discussion on Alex Tapscott's New Book on Web3

07:26 The Future of Web3 User Growth

09:17 The Convergence of Technologies in Web3

14:09 The Role of Gaming in Web3 Adoption

22:30 The Metaverse and the Future of Gaming

25:42 The Cycles of Crypto and Web3

27:13 The Importance of Aligning Value with Protocol

27:58 The Impact of Social Tokens

28:28 The Future of Protocols

30:03 The Longevity of Blockchain Capital

30:19 The Dominance of Ethereum

32:53 The Evolution of Blockchain Protocols

34:06 The User Experience in Blockchain

35:34 The Future of Decentralized Physical Infrastructure

47:07 The Regulatory Landscape of Crypto Ecosystem

LINKS:

Get in touch with the contributors to this week’s episode with the links above

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Pete Townsend introduces an insightful line-up of entrepreneurs and investors who share their thoughts on web3. Opinions are gathered around what aspects they hope to see web3 founders solve, focusing on topics such as user experience, digital identity, decentralized finance, AI, regulatory issues, and real-world applications.

The diverse panel includes John Hallahan from Fireblocks, Arry Yu from the U.S. Blockchain Coalition, Hesus Inoma from i13 Ventures, Niamh O'Connell from CasperLabs, Prashanth Swaminathan from Woodstock Fund, Sean Lee from the Crypto Council for Innovation, Clarisse Hagege from Dfns, and Lou Kerner from the Crypto Oracle Collective. The episode aims to explore and understand the current challenges and potential opportunities in the Web3 space.

00:19 Techstars Web3 Accelerator Announcement

00:47 Web3 founders' challenges and solutions

01:46 John Hallahan's Web3 Wishlist

03:43 Arry Yu's thoughts on digital identity and being the adult in the room

06:17 Hesus Inoma's insights on Web3 founders

08:27 Niamh O'Connell on self-sovereign identity

11:28 Prashanth Swaminathan's top areas for Web3

15:52 Sean Lee's perspective on Web3 tokens

18:16 Clarisse Hagege's call for real-life use cases

19:10 Lou Kerner's thoughts on balance and mistakes

CONTRIBUTORS:

John Hallahan, Director, Business Solutions & Advisory at Fireblocks, whose mission is to enable every business to easily and securely support digital assets and cryptocurrencies. (video)

Arry Yu, is the Co-Founder and Co-Chair at the U.S. Blockchain Coalition, a coalition of state blockchain associations, organizations and influencers across the country cooperating together to ensure the United States is a leader in blockchain, Web3, and distributed ledger technologies (DLT).

Hesus Inoma, Head of Strategy & Innovation at i13 Ventures, whose purpose is to co-create and back products and services grounded on first design principles for the new era of the web.

Niamh O’Connell, Enterprise & Partnerships Lead (U.S) at CasperLabs, the first blockchain built specifically for business adoption.

Prashanth Swaminathan, Partner at Woodstock Fund, a thesis and research-driven fund, investing in early and growth stage Web 3.0 companies and protocols.

Sean Lee, Senior Advisor at the Crypto Council for Innovation, a global alliance of crypto industry leaders that are advocating for responsible and healthy regulations in the digital asset industry.

Clarisse Hagege, Founder & CEO at Dfns, providing web3 wallets as APIs and wallet-as-a-service infrastructure that enables crypto developers to forget about private key management so they can focus on building what matters most — their applications.

Lou Kerner, the founder of the Crypto Oracle Collective, a decentralized web3 advisory firm and also the DAO for Crypto Mondays, which is the largest crypto meetup in the world with active chapters in 54 cities.

LINKS:

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify

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Sean Lee is the senior advisor at the Crypto Council for Innovation, which is a global alliance of crypto industry leaders advocating for responsible and healthy regulations in the digital asset industry.

Sean has conducted business in over 20+ countries and two continents across his career, and networked with extraordinary professionals across many industries. As a technology enthusiast, his career started in Internet 1.0 during the mid ’90s, spanning across eCommerce, cloud computing, and digitalization, with IBM, EMC, Pivotal, and Dell before moving into blockchain and crypto in the last few years. Through it all he has witnessed how technology combined with innovative business models can transform industries, and ultimately global economies as well.

In this episode, Sean and I dive into

• How the current events in crypto point to an even greater opportunity for education, advocacy, and policy to accelerate the adoption of digital assets and blockchain technology.

• How the Crypto Council for Innovation approaches policy frameworks to align the digital asset industry with regulators and vice-versa

• How far the crypto industry and regulators have come with centralized finance (CeFi) already

• An example of policy building through the lens of decentralized finance (DeFi) with a focus on placing the regulatory lens on appropriate layers of the DeFi stack.

• How we approach the paraphrasing of the various definitions of web3 into terms that are accessible to non-crypto natives

• A big change that Sean and I would both like to see in how most web3 founders think about fundraising.

LINKS:

Follow Sean Lee on LinkedIn and X/(Twitter)

Learn more about the Crypto Council for Innovation and their DeFi regulatory policy white paper

Watch Sean Lee’s weekly ‘This Week in Crypto: Sean’s Take on Asia’ videos on YouTube

Episode title inspired by Global Access by Young Thug (feat, Nate Ruess)

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Lou Kerner is the founder of the Crypto Oracle Collective, a decentralized web3 advisory firm, and also the DAO for Crypto Mondays, which is the largest crypto meetup in the world with active chapters in 54 cities.

In addition to Lou’s roles as founder of Crypto Oracle Collective and Crypto Mondays, he’s also a partner at Blockchain Coinvestors, a venture capital fund of funds focused on investing in blockchain since 2014. Lou has a great track record of recognizing emerging trends and doubling down on them, first on Wall Street, then onto media, venture capital and now in crypto and blockchain.

In this episode, Lou and I dive into his early career in traditional finance and community building and uncover what it was that he saw with his big crypto revelation in 2017, how he ported over his community-building experiences into crypto and blockchain, and the one thing on which he would like to see web3 founders focus.

LINKS:

Follow Lou Kerner on LinkedIn and X/(Twitter)

Learn more about Crypto Oracle Collective and Crypto Mondays

Follow Crypto Mondays on LinkedIn

Follow Crypto Oracle Collective on Linkedin

Episode title inspired by All Around the World by Jay-Z

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My discussion with Somi Arian is a deep dive into the entrepreneur's dilemma of solving problems vs. fulfilling desires, customer discovery, product building and pivots, all baked into a live startup mentoring session.

Somi is the founder and CEO of InPeak, an innovative platform enabling creators and businesses to build and monetize communities. Somi is also an award-winning filmmaker, tech philosopher, and author whose work sits at the intersection of AI, blockchain, and the future of work. Her 2018 documentary, “The Millennial Disruption” won several international awards and featured industry leaders from The Economist, Marie Claire, Bentley, JLR, and Steinway.

If you’re building in web3, the next class of the Techstars Web3 accelerator takes place in spring 2024, and applications are open now.

As web3 is global and borderless, so is Techstars Web3. Although most of the accelerator content is delivered virtually, the class does meet up in person for a week at a time at the beginning, middle and end of the program in different cities around the world. Jump on over to techstars.com/accelerators/web3 to apply.

LINKS:

Follow Somi Arian on LinkedIn and X/(Twitter)

Check out the Somi Arian Podcast and learn about InPeak

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Arry Yu is a 23+ year emerging technology industry veteran, serial founder and strategic operator with expertise in scaling business from "zero to one" with a consistent track record building high-performing teams. In this episode, Arry shares her story on her path into crypto and blockchain from the roots of her early corporate career into becoming a startup founder, investor and Executive Director and Co-Founder of the U.S. Blockchain Coalition (USBC).

Arry also sheds some light on the paradox that is the US attitude towards crypto, with the overwhelming majority of venture capital investment in crypto companies coming from the same country whose innovators have to withstand such a toxic regulatory view of crypto. We then round things out with Arry’s views on investing in web3 founders and their startups, and some of the ups and downs that come with the territory.

In addition to her role leading the U.S. Blockchain Coalition (USBC), Arry Yu is also the founding Chair of the Cascadia Blockchain Council. Yu also works in venture capital as she serves as the Managing Director of Yellow Umbrella Ventures and Venture Partner with Startup Haven Fund.

She also regularly serves as an educator, as Adjunct Professor and instructor for various academic institutions like the Saudi Digital Academy, Coding Dojo, Portland State University and the University of Washington Tacoma Milgard School of Business.

An innovator, public speaker, and writer, she has been widely published in national media outlets including Forbes, CNN Money, U.S. News & World Report, Geekwire and more. Over the years, Yu has worked with both investors and developers across four continents to launch both SaaS and consumer products.

LINKS:

Follow Arry Yu on LinkedIn and X/(Twitter)

Learn more about the US Blockchain Coalition and Yellow Umbrella Ventures

Episode title inspired by Reset Button by XV (feat. Talib Kweli)

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Joining Pete as guest co-host this week is Pet Berisha from Sporting Crypto, the number one Web3 Sports business exploring the intersection alongside 3000+ subscribers from the biggest sports and crypto brands in the world.

In this episode, Pet and Pete dive into whether or not the Sam Bankman-Fried trial actually matters, without digging into all of the gory details, and they also look at the state of crypto fundraising through the lens of Messari’s report of the same name for Q3 2023. They also talk through the latest news on Web3 gaming with the story of how one game from the team behind the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Star Atlas drove transaction volumes on the Solana blockchain to unexpected levels.

The Sporting Crypto newsletter is read by leaders from Meta, the EPL, Candy Digital, NBA, LaLiga, MLB, Sorare and many more. Sporting Crypto is also multi-media, with a podcast interviewing 15 industry leaders at the intersection, and they also host industry-leading events on a regular basis.

Sporting Crypto is also an advisory and consultancy service that has worked with Adidas, Infront Sport, COPA90, Universal Music, Flannels, Karate Combat, W3FC and more.

Pet Berisha is hosting two upcoming Sporting Crypto in-person events in London and NYC, check them out below:

-London, 25th October: https://www.sportingcrypto.com/events/event-three-448m9

-NYC, 16th November: https://www.sportingcrypto.com/events/event-three-448m9-srkzf

Finally, the Techstars Web3 accelerator is now open for applications for the class of 2024. If you’re building in web3, jump over to Techstars Web3 to apply.

STORIES COVERED:

The Judge is So Fed Up with Sam Bankman-Fried’s Lawyers (Slate, 5-Oct-23)

State of Crypto Fundraising (Messari, 5-Oct-23)

Just One Game on Solana Is Doing More Daily Transactions Than All of Polygon (Decrypt, 9-Oct-23)

LINKS:

Follow Pet Berisha on LinkedIn and X/Twitter

Subscribe to the Sporting Crypto newsletter

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

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We’ve got a special crossover episode this week courtesy of our friends at the Irish VC podcast, with a big shout-out to Finn Hatherell for producing the initial episode on the Irish VC podcast channel over the summer. The Irish VC podcast is produced by BVP, an Ireland-based venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Elliott Griffin.

In this episode, Elliott and Pete Townsend share a few stories on venture investing, Pete’s path into crypto, working with founders before and after investing in them, building products that people actually want, what it’s like inside a Techstars program, the power of founder market fit, founders and investors being accountable to each other, how to get the attention of VCs, why Pete is still doing MoneyNeverSleeps after all of these years and learning from our mistakes.

LINKS:

Follow Elliott Griffin on LinkedIn and learn more about BVP on their website

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Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

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Eva Lawrence is the Head of EMEA for Figment, the leading provider of blockchain infrastructure, providing staking solutions for institutions.

In this episode, we get into Eva’s evolution from a legal mind into institutional trading, and her slow-burn crypto awakening before jumping from the institutional world into the great wide open of crypto back in 2018. We also step through her role at Figment, look at the importance of staking now and into the future, and use the Wayback Machine that is X/Twitter to figure out what makes Eva do what she does.

Eva Lawrence has a diverse career across law, trading, business development, and strategy. Eva has been in the crypto space since 2018 and was previously COO of Arcane Crypto, a Nordic-listed crypto platform. She has 8+ years of experience in finance, primarily at Morgan Stanley, where she was Head of EMEA Flow Trading for Securities Lending after working in FX Prime Brokerage. In addition, Eva is a UK-qualified lawyer, with experience in digital assets, securities, funds, and financial services.

LINKS:

Follow Eva Lawrence on LinkedIn and X/(Twitter)

Learn more about Figment and follow Figment on LinkedIn and X/(Twitter)

Episode title inspired by Evolution by Joyner Lucas

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