Mar 31, 2021

13 min read

🎙️ METACAST: Top Crypto Podcasts of March 2021

Here is a quick overview of what we’ve been listening to this month!

Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation discusses Ethereum’s economic engine and how its design decisions (EIP-1559, Proof-Of-Stake, Issuance, etc.) emerges as an incredibly bullish evolution of sound money: Ultra Sound Money.
Antonio Juliano, founder of the decentralized exchange dYdX, and Eli Ben-Sasson, cofounder of StarkWare, discuss the recent launch of dYdX on Ethereum layer 2 using StarkWare’s scaling technology.
Eli Ben Sasson, co-founder and president of Starkware, provides a simple yet extensive explanation of concepts like ZK Starks, ZK snarks, ZK rollups, Optimistic rollups, etc.
Kevin Owocki of Gitcoin on ‘Rockstars of Ethereum’.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez talks about how Miami plans to be the crypto capital of the world.
Gil Luria, director of research at D.A. Davidson, talks about the upcoming Coinbase direct listing and his recent research note, “Introducing Crypto’s Amazon Moment.”
Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines, and Matthew Kolesky, president at Arbor Capital, discuss the state of Bitcoin adoption amongst financial advisors, who control $5 trillion in investor wealth.
Jamie Burke, CEO of Outlier Ventures, and Mason Nystrom, a research analyst at Messari, discuss the NFT craze that has enveloped the crypto world over the past few weeks.
Lawyers break down the legal issues surrounding NFTs on ‘Unchained’.
MetaKovan, the pseudonymous buyer of Beeple’s Everydays NFT and founder of MetaPurse, talks about his recent $69 million purchase.
Brendan McGill, co-founder of Offsetra and Carbon.fyi, a company focused on reducing carbon emissions, talks about the environmental impact of NFTs.
AMA with Devin Finzer, Co-Founder & CEO of OpenSea, the largest decentralized NFT marketplace for buying and selling digital goods.
Alex Salnikov of Rarible joined ‘Epicenter’ to discuss the different NFT use cases and how NFTs can scale and function in a multi-chain world. It’s a great conversation at the unfolding of a new paradigm.
Richard Chen, partner at one of the first crypto venture funds, 1confirmation, joins ‘Blockcrunch’ in breaking down all things NFTs.
Episode 16 of ‘Metaverse Musings’ with Roham Gharegozlou the Founder & CEO of Dapper Labs who built Crypto Kitties and NBA Top Shot.
‘Chain Reaction’ Host Piers Kicks sits down with Breck Stodghill from the Zora team.
Sébastien Borget, Co-founder and COO of The Sandbox, discusses concepts like NFTs, virtual economy, virtual real estate, and the Metaverse on ‘The Erica Show’.
‘Metaverse Musings’ episode with Nicolas Julia, the Co-Founder & CEO of Sorare, a global fantasy football game where you trade and collect players as NFTs.
Justin Blau, known by his stage name 3LAU, a DJ turned crypto-entrepreneur joined the ‘Bankless’ podcast. At the end of February, he auctioned collectible NFTs for his ‘Ultraviolet’ album for a record-setting $11.7M.
Nate and Mark from the Bancor team join the ‘Blockcrunch’ hosts to discuss: what’s behind Bancor’s explosive growth, Bancor vs. Uniswap vs. Sushiswap, and more.
Acala Founders Bette Chen and Ruitao Su joined ‘Blockcrunch’ in breaking down: building DeFu on Ethereum vs. Polkadot, why Acala chose Polkadot over other chains, and more.
Interview with Do Kwon, Founder and CEO, Terraform Labs.
Hasu, a pioneer and thought leader in the world of cryptoeconomic research, featured on ‘Bankless’.
Anna and Tarun, hosts of ‘Zero Knowledge’ podcast, took an in-depth look into AMMs with Guillermo Angeris, a PhD student in Stanford who co-authored a number of papers on fundamental AMM properties.
Anna chats with Alex Ozdemir, a PhD student at Stanford researching formal methods, cryptography and distributed systems.
Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise, joined ‘Bankless’ for State of the Nation.
Liquity — the decentralized borrowing protocol — with Kolten Bergeron and Robert Lauko.
KeeperDAO with Joey Zacherl.
AMA with Chris Spadafora, Founder of BadgerDAO.
CK and David, hosts of ‘POV Crypto’ discuss how BTC, NFTs, and DeFi are opening up to a more and more general audience.
And much more!

Unchained/Unconfirmed

Unchained:

What Exactly Do You Get When You Buy an NFT? Three Lawyers Discuss: Olta Andoni, fintech and IP Attorney at Zlatkin Wong and adjunct professor at Chicago Kent College of Law, Tonya Evans, visiting Full Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law School and host of the podcast Tech Intersect, and Stuart Levi, co-head of the Intellectual Property and Technology practice at Skadden Arps and coordinator of the firm’s Blockchain and Digital Asset practice, break down the legal issues surrounding NFTs.

Financial Advisors Control $5 Trillion in Investor Wealth. Are They Buying Bitcoin?: Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines, and Matthew Kolesky, president at Arbor Capital, discuss the state of Bitcoin adoption amongst financial advisors, who control $5 trillion in investor wealth.
How NFTs Are Revolutionizing How Creators Make Money: Jamie Burke, CEO of Outlier Ventures, and Mason Nystrom, a research analyst at Messari, discuss the NFT craze that has enveloped the crypto world over the past few weeks.
Can dYdX Become a Decentralized BitMEX? How It Is Scaling With StarkWare: Antonio Juliano, founder of the decentralized exchange dYdX, and Eli Ben-Sasson, cofounder of StarkWare, discuss the recent launch of dYdX on Ethereum layer 2 using StarkWare’s scaling technology.
Caitlin Long: Why Avanti Will Be a New Kind of Crypto Bank: Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Avanti Financial Group, talks about the issues plaguing the current state of technology in traditional finance and how her background as a 22-year Wall Street veteran, gubernatorial appointee to the Wyoming Blockchain Task Force, and crypto pioneer is helping her shape Avanti into a bridge between conventional banking and crypto.

Unconfirmed:

Why Miami Mayor Francis Suarez Calls Crypto ‘the Wave of the Future’: Miami Mayor Francis Suarez talks about how Miami plans to be the crypto capital of the world.

MetaKovan on Why He Spent $69 Million on a Jpeg: MetaKovan, the pseudonymous buyer of Beeple’s Everydays NFT and founder of MetaPurse, talks about his recent $69 million purchase.
How NFTs Are Revolutionizing How Creators Make Money: Jamie Burke, CEO of Outlier Ventures, and Mason Nystrom, a research analyst at Messari, discuss the NFT craze that has enveloped the crypto world over the past few weeks.
Why This Environmentalist Doesn’t Blame Creators for the Carbon Footprint of NFTs: Brendan McGill, co-founder of Offsetra and Carbon.fyi, a company focused on reducing carbon emissions, talks about the environmental impact of NFTs.
Is Coinbase Stock a Good Buy? This Analyst Says Yes: Gil Luria, director of research at D.A. Davidson, talks about the upcoming Coinbase direct listing and his recent research note, “Introducing Crypto’s Amazon Moment.”

Bankless

57 — Ultra Sound Money | Justin Drake: Justin Drake is a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation and is leading the charge of applied cryptography to the Ethereum network. Last time he was on the podcast, we discussed cryptography as the foundation for what we called ‘Moon Math.’ Last week, Justin returned to the show to discuss Ethereum’s economic engine and how its design decisions (EIP-1559, Proof-Of-Stake, Issuance, etc.) emerges as an incredibly bullish evolution of sound money: Ultra Sound Money.

58 — EIP-1559 | Hasu: Hasu is a pioneer and thought leader in the world of cryptoeconomic research. He is a rare voice in crypto, unafraid to speak his mind and break ranks with both Ethereans and Bitcoiners. His takes were often varied and elusive… until the EIP-1559 proposal. Dive in to learn what changed his mind.

56 — Authenticity in Crypto | 1confirmation: Nick Tomaino and Richard Chen are partners at 1confirmation, a crypto venture fund with $75M+ in assets under management (AUM).

55 — Welcome To Bankless | 2021 Edition

54 — Why DeFi is the Future | Mark Cuban: Mark Cuban needs no introduction, but the entrepreneur and Shark Tank host has an impressive depth of knowledge of the crypto space, and he has a particular ability to break complicated subjects into simple, digestible ideas.

SotN #39: Is Wall Street Going Bankless? | David Grider of Fundstrat: David Grider is a Digital Asset strategy researcher at Fundstrat, the independent research boutique firm. They advise high net-worth individuals, wealth advisors, and a number of actors throughout traditional finance.

SotN #38: The State of NFTs, with Andrew Steinwold (Past, Current, and Future): Andrew Steinwold is a respected voice in the NFT space and is managing partner of Sfermion, an NFT-native investment firm.

SotN #37: Justin 3LAU — The Frontier of NFTs ($12M drop SOLD, A Token Renaissance in Digital Art?): Justin Blau, known by his stage name 3LAU, is a DJ turned crypto-entrepreneur. At the end of February, he auctioned collectible NFTs for his ‘Ultraviolet’ album for a record-setting $11.7M.

SotN #36: DeFi Crypto Index For Financial Advisors | Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan: Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise, joins Bankless for this week’s State of the Nation. Founded in 2017, Bitwise Asset Management pioneered the first cryptocurrency index fund and provides rules-based exposure to the cryptoasset space. Learn about Bitwise’s newest product, their DeFi Crypto Index Fund.

AMA with Devin Finzer, Co-Founder & CEO of OpenSea: Devin Finzer is Co-Founder & CEO of OpenSea, the largest decentralized NFT marketplace for buying and selling digital goods.

AMA with Chris Spadafora, Founder of BadgerDAO

ROLLUP: 4th Week of March (Uniswap V3, Fidelity ETF, BTC Energy Waste, Jack Dorsey NFT)

ROLLUP: 3rd Week of March (Elon Musk NFT Song, Stimulus Checks, Canada ETF, Gemini & Aave)

ROLLUP: 2nd Week of March (Beeple NFTs, EIP1559, Stimulus Checks, GBTC)

ROLLUP: 1st Week of March (3LAU & Grimes NFTs, PayPal Crypto, Citigroup Report)

Into the Ether

Zero Knowledge

Episode 173: Building Private AMMs with Guillermo Angeris: Last week, Anna & Tarun took an in-depth look into AMMs with Guillermo Angeris, a PhD student in Stanford who co-authored a number of papers on fundamental AMM properties. His most recent paper deals with privacy in AMMs, effectively demonstrating how superficial attempts at making a private AMM are doomed. But there is hope! And in this conversation, they explore some mitigations that can not only allow for effective use of privacy in AMMs, but could provide benefits from its inclusion.
Episode 172: ZK languages with Alex Ozdemir: In this episode, Anna chats with Alex Ozdemir, a PhD student at Stanford researching formal methods, cryptography and distributed systems. They take a bird’s eye view of the current landscape of zk languages and libraries, looking at the history and current state-of-the-art of circuit-building tools.
Episode 171: Mapping the Polkadot Ecosystem: In this episode, Anna goes on a grand tour of the Polkadot ecosystem ahead of the launch of Parachains. In this multi-interview episode, she explores the Polkadot ecosystem, how teams are interacting with the existing tech stacks, what they are looking forward to, and how these networks may evolve in the future once Parachains go live.
Episode 170: Hardware for ZKPs & VDFs with Supranational: In this episode, Anna and Tarun talk with Simon Peffers and Kelly Olson from Supranational, a startup focused on building specialised software and hardware for advanced cryptographic computation. Simon and Kelly talk about their recent work helping out the Ethereum Foundation with VDFs, as well as building a better SNARK algorithm for Protocol Labs’ Filecoin.

Epicenter

Epicenter Podcast

Epicenter is a podcast which takes you to heart of perhaps the most important technological revolution of our time, the…

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Liquity — The Decentralized Borrowing Protocol with Kolten Bergeron & Robert Lauko.
KeeperDAO — The On-Chain Liquidity Underwriter with Joey Zacherl.
Rarible — The NFT Transformation with Alex Salnikov. He joined us to discuss the different NFT use cases and how NFTs can scale and function in a multi-chain world. It’s a great conversation at the unfolding of a new paradigm.
Stake Capital/Rekt — Uncovering the Dark Side of DeFi with Julien Bouteloup.

POV Crypto

Debating Bitcoin Security and Ultra Sound Money: Last week CK confronts David about a recent episode of Bankless with Justin Drake and the Ultra Sound Money Meme.
The World is Waking up to the Power of Crypto: CK and David discuss how BTC, NFTs, and DeFi are opening up to a more and more general audience. We discuss What a Bitcoin future will look like and Debate whether Ethereum can compete with bitcoin as de-facto future money.
Trading Strategies, Charging the Monetary Battery

Blockcrunch

Alpha Leak: Alchemix is Creating a New DeFi Primitive: Last week, a group of pseudonymous developers raised $8M from leading investors in crypto to build a completely new way to borrow and lend in DeFi. Developer Scoopy joins the show in discussing what Alchemix is, how it adds a new design space to DeFi, and why he thinks Alchemix will become a major pillar in DeFi.

Alpha Leak: How Bancor Solves Impermanent Loss , Nate Hindman & Mark Richardson — Ep. 137: In the past 3 months, decentralized exchange Bancor has almost 6x its market share against market leader, Uniswap. Nate and Mark from the Bancor team join the hosts to discuss: what’s behind Bancor’s explosive growth, Bancor vs. Uniswap vs. Sushiswap, and more.

How Pros Invest In NFTs — Richard Chen, Partner at 1confirmation, Ep. 136: Richard Chen, partner at one of the first crypto venture funds, 1confirmation, joins the show in breaking down all things NFTs. They discuss: are memes viable investment theses? do NFTs rely too much on centralized marketplaces? how Richard identifies NFTs that will grow in value, and more.

Why Acala is Building DeFi on Polkadot — Ruitao Su, Bette Chen, Ep. 135: Acala, the anticipated project building on Polkadot, is building a hub for DeFi. Founders Bette Chen and Ruitao Su joins Blockcrunch in breaking down: building DeFu on Ethereum vs. Polkadot, why Acala chose Polkadot over other chains, and more.

Chain Reaction

VEVE: The Evolution of Digital Collectibles — Metaverse Musings Ep 20: Host Piers Kicks sits down for Episode 20 of Metaverse Musings with David and Dan, the Co-Founders ECOMI that created VEVE, a next-generation collectibles experience where users can own their favourite characters and IP as NFTs.
Sorare: A Shot On Goal — Metaverse Musings Ep 19: Host Piers Kicks sits down for Episode 19 of Metaverse Musings with Nicolas Julia, the Co-Founder & CEO of Sorare, a global fantasy football game where you trade and collect players as NFTs. Zora: The Birth Of Platformless Media — Metaverse Musings Ep 17: Host Piers Kicks sits down for Episode 17 of Metaverse Musings with Breck Stodghill from the Zora team.
Building DeFi Disneyland: Julien Bouteloup covering StakeDAO, BlackPool, Rekt and Curve: Delphi Digital analyst Jonathan Erlich hosts Julien Bouteloup, CEO of StakeDAO and Curve crew member, to discuss all things StakeDAO, Rekt, BlackPool and Curve.
The Emerging “Valuenet” with Maple Leaf Capital: Host Jose Maria Macedo sits down with Maple Leaf Capital, an anonymous investor and analyst in the space who has quickly made a name for himself with some excellent reports on DeFi and sharp takes on crypto twitter.
Dapper Labs: Paving The Way For Consumer Blockchain — Metaverse Musings Ep 16: Host Piers Kicks sits down for Episode 16 of Metaverse Musings with Roham Gharegozlou the Founder & CEO of Dapper Labs who built Crypto Kitties and NBA Top Shot.
The Delphi Podcast — Armor Finance — Making DeFi Safer: Co-hosts Jose Maria Macedo and Yan Liberman sit down with Azeem and Robert from Armor Finance. Armor Finance is a new project building a smart insurance aggregator for DeFi.

The Erica Show

EP24 — Do Kwon, Founder and CEO, Terraform Labs: In this interview, Do shares his background and how Terra came about. Also, he explains the core concepts such as UST, Luna, Chai, Mirror Protocol, and the recently launched Anchor Protocol — and how they all work together. Do also describes how the 20% APY is achieved and can be maintained, as well as the ultimate vision for Terra. Lastly, he shares his insight on NFTs, CBDCs and on what he thinks of the Bank of Thailand response on THT.

EP23 — Eli Ben-Sasson, Co-Founder and President of StarkWare: In episode 23, Eli Ben Sasson, co-founder and president of Starkware, provides a simple yet extensive explanation of concepts like ZK Starks, ZK snarks, ZK rollups, Optimistic rollups, etc. Further, Eli introduces Cairo, STARK-friendly programming language, StarkEx and StarkNet.
Sébastien Borget, Co-founder and COO of The Sandbox: In Episode 22, Erica had a deep conversation with Sébastien, discussing concepts like NFTs, virtual economy, virtual real estate, and the Metaverse. Sébastien explains about the recent land sale, release of Pre Season 0, social interaction among users in the platform, as well as various partnerships with The Sandbox.
EP21 — Antonio Juliano, Founder and CEO at dYdX: An interview with Antonio at dYdX, one of the most well-known and largest decentralized derivatives exchanges in the cryptocurrency industry. Key topics they cover include Layer 2 solution with StarkWare, DEX vs CEX, decentralized perpetual trading, Asia growth focus, etc.