🎙️ METACAST: Top Crypto Podcasts of December 2023

TL;DR

• GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy discusses his pro-crypto stance and the potential of pegging the dollar to commodities, including Bitcoin.
• Chess legend Garry Kasparov discusses freedom, AI, geopolitics, and crypto.
• Vitalik Buterin shares his perspective on the societal debate of tech acceleration vs. deacceleration and the probability of AI doom.
• Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart explains why the SEC may prefer cash creation over in-kind creation of spot Bitcoin ETFs, impacting Grayscale.
• Ryan Selkis shares his crypto predictions for 2024, covering investment themes, stablecoins, and policy.
• Kraken CEO Dave Ripley talks about Kraken’s challenges with the SEC.
• Matthew Sigel discusses VanEck’s 15 hottest crypto predictions for 2024.
• Jim Posen and Radi Cojbasic from Ulvetanna discuss Binius, a new proving system optimized for hardware in the ZK space.
• Kostas Kryptos and Aayush Gupta discuss zkLogin and ZK Email projects, exploring web2 onboarding into web3.
• Anatoly Yakovenko explains Solana’s successful recovery after the collapse of FTX, making it the best-performing crypto in 2023.
• Marek Olszewski and Rene Reinsberg discuss Celo’s mobile-first approach and transition to Layer 2.
• Mustafa and Ismail, Celestia CoFounders, explain the vision and value of Celestia.
• Arjun Bhuptani talks about Connext’s role in connecting different blockchain networks securely.
• David Gogel discusses dYdX’s move to operate on its independent app chain.
• Keith Comito, President at Lifespan, discusses aging research, lifespan extension, and the societal implications of extending human lifespan.
• Robbie Ferguson and Marco van den Heuvel discuss the partnership between Immutable and Merit Circle in crypto gaming.
• Vance Spencer and Michael Anderson discuss the comeback of crypto games.
• Yat Siu talks about Animoca Brands, NFTs, blockchain gaming, and the open metaverse.
• Aki Balogh discusses discreet log contracts, their trust assumptions, and implications for Bitcoin’s use cases.
• Dorothy DeWitt and Michael Dawson discuss Binance’s compliance monitorship and its implications.
• Lucas Bruder, CEO of Jito, explores Jito’s role in the Solana ecosystem and the recent airdrop.
• Chris Bradbury discusses Summer. fi’s vision, strategies, and competition in the DeFi space.
• Market forecaster Raoul Pal predicts a $100K-$200K Bitcoin price in 2024 and compares Ether vs. Solana.
• And more!

Unchained

• How Binance Will Open All Its Activity to the U.S. Government: Experts Dorothy DeWitt and Michael Dawson discuss the implications, challenges, and potential outcomes of Binance’s compliance monitorship.
• Market Forecaster Raoul Pal Says There’s a Good Chance Bitcoin Will Hit $100K-$200K in 2024: Pal describes the likely scenarios for where Bitcoin’s price goes next year and also discusses the relative merits of Ether vs. Solana and the usefulness of BRC-20 tokens.

• Anatoly Yakovenko on Solana’s Astounding Recovery and Its Future Plans: Things looked bleak for Solana after the collapse of FTX. Anatoly Yakovenko explains how the blockchain rebounded so successfully that SOL became the best-performing crypto in 2023.

• Why Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Is So Pro-Crypto: The GOP presidential candidate also talks about how pegging the dollar to a basket of commodities that could eventually include Bitcoin would help the U.S. economy, and why he hates the idea of a CBDC.

• Why the SEC May Want Cash Creation of Spot Bitcoin ETFs: Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart explains why it seems the SEC prefers cash vs. in-kind creation of spot Bitcoin ETFs, and why this choice would negatively impact Grayscale.

The Chopping Block:

• The Chopping Block: Top White Hat Hacker Samczsun Discusses the State of Crypto Security
• The Chopping Block: How This DeFi Hack Negotiator Gets Hackers to Return Stolen Money

Bankless

• Garry Kasparov on Why Freedom Always Wins: Chess Legend and Freedom Fighter Garry Kasparov on AI, Geopolitics, and Crypto. One of the first people to experience machine intelligence profoundly–the greatest chess player in the world when he lost a match to the IBM computer program Deep Blue in 1997 — since then, humans have never been able to beat machines in a game of chess. The theme of this episode is Freedom. Garry’s optimism shines through on this topic. With experience in Geopolitics, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Rights, Garry Kasparov might just be the perfect guest to guide us through some very challenging topics that will likely define the rest of this decade, and beyond.

• Vitalik Buterin’s Philosophy: d/acc: This past year there’s been a great societal-wide debate: Tech-acceleration (e/acc) vs deacceleration. Should we continue the path toward AI or are the robots going to kill us? The hosts have been hoping Vitalik would weigh in on this debate ever since their episode Elizer Yudkowski — now he has, so what’s Vitalik’s probability of AI doom?

• Ryan Selkis Shares His 2024 Crypto Predictions: Ryan Selkis joined the show to walk us through his crypto thesis for 2024. We cover big investment themes, people to watch, the future of stablecoins, policy takes and so much more in this wide-ranging episode.

• Are Crypto Games Making a Comeback?: Are crypto games making a comeback? Vance Spencer and his Co-Founder Michael Anderson joined the show to answer that question.
• Kraken’s CEO on Their Battle Against The SEC: Kraken is one of the two most important exchanges in the US right now, it’s also an essential bridge across many other jurisdictions. Recently Kraken has come under fire by the SEC for the second time this year. In this episode, the hosts were joined by Kraken CEO, Dave Ripley. Dave walks them through what it’s like taking the reigns of one of the largest US crypto exchanges and how he plans to navigate the constant battles they have to face from US regulators.

• VanEck’s 2024 Crypto Predictions with Matthew Sigel: In this episode, Matthew goes over VanEck’s 15 hottest 2024 crypto predictions report. Matthew Sigel is the Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck and has been since 2021.
• What is Celestia ($TIA)? Unpacking Modular Blockchains: Celestia’s token ($TIA) dropped this month. Highlighted by its modular data availability network the crypto community has shown a lot of excitement around this launch. Why? What is so valuable about Celestia? What is its vision for crypto? How, if successful, will Celestia change the crypto landscape? On Bankless the hosts were talking to two Celestia CoFounders Mustafa and Ismail to explore the thesis behind Celesia.

• Immutable and Merit Circle Join Forces: The seeds of the crypto gaming thesis are looking to play out. Now the Bankless hosted Robbie Ferguson from Immutable and Marco van den Heuvel from Merit Circle. Merit Circle is migrating from Avalanche to Immutable, bringing along its gaming ecosystem, DAO, and sizable treasury.

• Do We Hate Solana?: The truth on how we feel about Solana. Define the fundamentals, and compare other networks.

• Jito’s Impact on Solana with CEO Lucas Bruder: This is an exploration of Jito, the Solana validator client, the staked Solana token JITOSOL, and the MEV optimization engine. The recent Jito airdrop show the whole industry as millions of dollars in value flooded into the Solana ecosystem. Joining the show is Lucas Bruder from the Jito team to walk us through the basics and nuances of this multifaceted project.
• Ethereum is Hilariously Underpriced | Will SOL Flip ETH?: Someone has to say it. ETH’s price at $2.2k is hilarious. Everyone is out here trading “what ifs” this cycle when Ethereum has fundamentals. Let us tell you why $2.2k ETH doesn’t make any sense.

Rollups:

• ROLLUP: Fed Pivot | Ledger Scare | New Warren Bill | Airdrop Szn
• ROLLUP: Bull Market is Here | $JTO Airdrop | Capital Hill Crosshairs
• ROLLUP: Jito Airdrop | Cosmos Blocksize Wars | Kyber Hack | Paradigm’s Blast

Zero Knowledge

• Episode 303: A Dive into Binius with Ulvetanna: Anna and cohost Brendan Farmer catch up with Jim Posen and Radi Cojbasic from Ulvetanna. They cover the origin story of Ulvetanna and their work on the ZK hardware/software intersection before moving on to discuss Binius, a new proving system they developed that is optimized for hardware. Binius is built on towers of binary fields and draws on recent breakthroughs in SNARKs. This work continues the trend towards the use of smaller fields and was inspired by the development of new lookup arguments, work done on multilinear provers and sum-check as well as the use of recursive composition in SNARKs.
• Episode 302: ZK for web2 interop with zkLogin & ZK Email: Anna and cohost Kobi chat with both Kostas Kryptos from Mysten Labs, discussing the zkLogin project and Aayush Gupta representing the ZK Email + Email Wallet projects. They explore the use case of web2 onboarding into web3, through the lens of these two different projects which emerged independently but share a lot of the same characteristics. They discuss the way this use case problem was first identified, the solution that each project came up with independently, the decisions that each project took, and the future use cases they would enable.

Episode 302: ZK for web2 interop with zkLogin & ZK Email - ZK Podcast

Epicenter

• Aki Balogh: DLC Link — Self-Wrapped Bitcoin (dlcBTC): The hosts were joined by Aki Balogh, co-founder of DLC Link, to discuss discreet log contracts, their trust assumptions and what they mean for Bitcoin’s use cases and liquidity.

• Yat Siu: Animoca Brands — From NFTs & Blockchain Gaming to the Open Metaverse: The hosts were joined by Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, to discuss the importance of digital culture in our modern-day lives and how NFT ownership unlocks community building in the open metaverse.
• Marek Olszewski & Rene Reinsberg: Celo — The Mobile-First High-Throughput Blockchain: The hosts were joined by Marek Olszewski & Rene Reinsberg to discuss Celo’s mobile-first approach to building a low-fee, high-throughput blockchain with real-world applications, and their transition to L2.

The Defiant

• Becoming the Front Page of Finance: The Summer.fi Vision: Chris Bradbury is the CEO of Summer.fi (previously oasis.app). Summer.fi is the 6th largest DeFi protocol that enables users to borrow, lend, and multiply assets across multiple DeFi protocols. In this conversation, we dive into the basics of Summer.fi, the rebrand from oasis.app, learn about popular strategies within the platform and their risks, UX updates, competition, and much more.

• DEX Aggregator Matcha Adds New Cross Chain Functionality: Matcha recently launched cross-chain swap functionality, allowing users to swap one asset on a particular chain for a new asset on a separate chain with one transaction. Cross-chain swaps on Matcha are available on 7 chains: Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base and BNB Chain.

• Seamless Crosschain Interactions with Connext: The HTTP of Web3: Arjun Bhuptani, is the founder and CEO of Connext Labs. He talks about Connext, an important component in the Web 3 stack. In a world of many Layer 1s and Layer 2s, connecting the chains is so important, especially doing it securely.
• Why Is dYdX Ditching Ethereum?: David Gogel is the VP of Strategy and Operations at the dYdX Foundation. In this podcast, David will discuss the recent milestone of the foundation operating on its independent app chain. This transition involved multiple stages and intriguing tokenomics mechanisms, marking a significant moment for the organization.

MISC

• Keith Comito’s Insights on Aging Research and Lifespan Extension: In this episode of the DeSci podcast, the hosts were joined by Keith Comito, a computer programmer, mathematician, and President at Lifespan. Lifespan.io is a non-profit advocacy foundation dedicated to accelerating initiatives aimed at addressing age-related diseases and extending the healthy human lifespan. Extending the human lifespan has been a captivating and often controversial topic. Over the years, the focus has shifted from merely treating end diseases to addressing the fundamental mechanisms of aging itself. In this episode, Keith shares with us the factors that inspired his commitment to work on aging research. They also discuss how societal attitudes on extending lifespan have changed over the years and the philosophical implications of infinite lifespan. In conclusion, Keith underscores the paramount importance of attaining the goals of aging research, emphasizing the positive impact such accomplishments would have on the well-being and advancement of humanity.

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