🎙️ METACAST: Top Crypto Podcasts of November 2020

Paradigm

Published in

Paradigm

11 min readNov 27, 2020

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

In the seventh installment of the ‘Why Bitcoin Now’ series, Meltem Demirors, the chief strategy officer at Coinshares, and Lyn Alden, the founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, discuss the state of Bitcoin since June, amidst the presidential election — which takes place on the date of publication of the show — and a global pandemic.
Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association and a board member of HODLpac, discusses how advocating for crypto will change under what is likely to be a new presidential administration.
Preston Van Loon of Prysmatic Labs featured on ‘Bankless’.
Eric Conner, co-Host of the EthHub Podcast, Formerly Product at Gnosis, and Ethereum’s Unofficial Community Manager joined ‘Bankless’ podcast.
Trent McConaghy discussed Ocean Protocol on ‘Epicenter’.
Circles with Martin Köppelmann.
Andrew Keys and James Slazas on LiquidStake.This week, Anna of ‘Zero Knowledge’ podcast catches up with Illia Polosukhin, CTO and co-founder of NEAR, to talk about what’s new in the network since last year.
Christine Sandler, head of sales and marketing at Fidelity Digital Assets, talks about how 30 years in traditional finance and an early retirement led her to Coinbase, and more.
Compound Labs General Counsel, Jake Chervinsky, joins the ‘Unchained’ to discuss privacy and self custody in crypto.
dYdX founder Antonio Juliano joins ‘Blockcrunch’ to talk: dYdX focusing on perpetual swaps, Uniswap vs. dYdX vs. Synthetix, building on Layer 2 vs. building on other chains, and more.
‘Chain Reaction’ host Tom Shaughnessy hosts Mona El Isa, the Co-Founder of Avant Garde Finance and Lead Developer for Melon.
Tom Shaughnessy hosts 3LAU and Cooper Turley who came on the pod to discuss Audius.
In the latest episode, ‘The Erica Show’ welcomes Jiho who is in charge of Growth at Axie Infinity, which recorded the number 1 NFT game on Ethereum by monthly and weekly active users.
The 10th guest of ‘The Erica Show’ was Bobby Ong, the person behind Coingecko.
Nic Carter, general partner at Castle Island Ventures, and co-founder and chairman of Coin Metrics, explains why the Bitcoin price has been rising without the retail bubble seen in 2017–2018 on ‘Unconfirmed’
Roxana Danila, CTO of Nexus Mutual on building the world’s first insurance protocol for DeFi on ‘Cryptotesters’.
CEO and founder of Circle, Jeremy Allaire joins ‘Blockcrunch’ in revealing his experience taking two tech companies public in the 90s, how Circle grew USDC in the early days, and more.
Can investors find alpha by looking at blockchain data? Companies have been built around the idea of aggregating onchain transaction data into investable insights — do they work? ‘Blockcrunch’ host Jason Choi speaks with Brian and Dino from crypto analytics company, Santiment.
Interview with DeFi Dad on ‘The Crypto News Podcast’.
And much more!

Unchained/Unconfirmed

Unchained:

What Fidelity Is Doing With the Bitcoin It’s Mined: Christine Sandler, head of sales and marketing at Fidelity Digital Assets, talks about how 30 years in traditional finance and an early retirement led her to Coinbase, and more.

Everything You Need to Know About the Looming Battle Over Privacy in Crypto: Jake Chervinsky, general counsel at Compound Labs, and Kristin Smith, executive director of The Blockchain Association, talk about the storm brewing in the cryptosphere involving self-custody and privacy.
Why Bitcoin Now: Bitcoin Under a Biden Administration: In this episode, Dan Tapiero, founder of 10T Holdings and Gold Bullion International, and Cathie Wood, CEO and CIO at ARK Invest, discuss the long election week in the U.S. and how they believe Bitcoin will behave in a post-election world.
Why Bitcoin Now: Meltem Demirors and Lyn Alden on the Perfect Conditions for Bitcoin: In this seventh installment of the ‘Why Bitcoin Now’ series, Meltem Demirors, the chief strategy officer at Coinshares, and Lyn Alden, the founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, discuss the state of Bitcoin since June, amidst the presidential election — which takes place on the date of publication of the show — and a global pandemic.

Unconfirmed:

9 Ways Bitcoin Is at an All-Time High: Nic Carter, general partner at Castle Island Ventures, and co-founder and chairman of Coin Metrics, explains why the Bitcoin price has been rising without the retail bubble seen in 2017–2018.
Chad Cascarilla on Paxos’s Partnership With PayPal: Paxos CEO and co-founder Chad Cascarilla discusses his company’s partnership with PayPal, which just opened up its crypto purchase and selling product to all its US customers.
What the Crypto Industry Could See Under a Biden Administration: Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association and a board member of HODLpac, discusses how advocating for crypto will change under what is likely to be a new presidential administration.

Bankless

Phase 0 ANNOUNCED — ETH STAKING IS HERE | Preston Van Loon of Prysmatic Labs ALPHA LEAK:

Into the Ether

EthHub Weekly #141: Ethereum 2.0 Genesis set for 12/1, Yam announces Umbrella Protocol, Andre Cronje introduces Deriswap, Connext Network details Vector and Jeff Coleman’s thread on eth2

Zero Knowledge

Episode 157: Illia Polosukhin on the development and launch of NEAR protocol: This week, Anna catches up with Illia Polosukhin, CTO and co-founder of NEAR, to talk about what’s new in the network since last year. They go deeper on some of the topics they discussed last time — such as sharded vs non-sharded blockchains and data availability as well as discuss the long and rocky road to launching a new PoS network, building a validator community and where we might see privacy and zkp tech in Near.
Episode 156: Stateless Validation with Alin Tomescu: In last week’s episode, Anna and Fredrik chat with Alin Tomescu, a post-doc researcher at VMWare Research Group, about the concept of stateless systems. Specifically, they explore his work on stateless validation, why this would be desirable and what is the state of the research around this topic.
Episode 155: Testing PoW Consensus Algorithm Security with Ren Zhang from Nervos: In this episode, the hosts revisit the topic of Consensus Algorithms with Ren Zhang, a researcher at Nervos and previously at imec-COSIC (KU Leuven). They chat about an earlier work he did on evaluating PoW consensus protocols security and explore his more recent work on NC-Max — a consensus protocol that breaks the throughput limit and enables the full utilization of the nodes’ bandwidth in confirming transactions
Episode 154: ZK for authentication with Nolan and Locke from NuID: In this episode, Anna spoke with Nolan Smith and Locke Brown, co-founders at NuID — a zero knowledge authentication solution. They explore the use-case of zero knowledge powered password management and how this relates to Identity.

Epicenter

Ocean Protocol — The Platform Making Waves in the Data Industry with Trent McConaghy.

Circles — Creating Universal Basic Income Economies for Everyone with Martin Köppelmann.
Alchemy — A Powerful Developer Platform and API for Ethereum Apps with Nikil Viswanathan.
FTX & Project Serum — The World’s First Decentralized Derivatives Exchange with Sam Bankman-Fried.

POV Crypto

Trading ETH/BTC with Kyle Davies of Three Arrows: Join ck and David as they host high powered traders Kyle Davis of Three Arrows back on to the show. They discuss what he sees in the crypto market and why he and his firm have changed their tune about Ethereum Defi and Bitcoin.
169 — Bitcoin and the 4th Turning | Brandon Quittem: Brandon Quittem, friend of the pod, recently wrote a piece called ‘Bitcoin and the Rhythms of History’.
Fight Night: How to be Bullish, Thanksgiving Edition: David and CK have a conversation about the state of the industry, and express their excitement about what’s to come in the months ahead.

Blockcrunch

dYdX: Winning the DeFi Exchange Wars — Antonio Juliano, Ep. 121: dYdX wants to become the largest crypto exchange — period. Can DeFi challenge centralized exchange giants? 2 years since their first conversation, founder Antonio Juliano joins the hosts to talk: why is dYdX focusing on perpetual swaps, Uniswap vs. dYdX vs. Synthetix, building on Layer 2 vs. building on other chains, and more.
$0 to $3 Billion: The Master Plan for USDC — Jeremy Allaire, Ep. 120: Within a few years, USDC ballooned from an experiment to a $3 billion dollar phenomenon — but this is just the beginning. CEO and founder of Circle, Jeremy Allaire joins the show in revealing his experience taking 2 tech companies public in the 90s, how Circle grew USDC in the early days, and more.
Finding Alpha from Onchain Crypto Data — Santiment Team, Ep. 119: Can investors find alpha by looking at blockchain data? Companies have been built around the idea of aggregating onchain transaction data into investable insights — do they work? Host Jason Choi speaks with Brian and Dino from crypto analytics company, Santiment.
Can IDEX Compete with Centralized Exchanges? — Alex Wearn, Ep. 118: IDEX is taking a unique approach to scaling decentralized exchanges by combining centralized elements with non-custodial features. Can this work? The hosts speak with founder Alex Wearn.

Chain Reaction

3LAU and Cooper Turley: Audius Is Reinventing Music Streaming: Tom Shaughnessy hosts 3LAU and Cooper Turley who came on the pod to discuss Audius.
Red from Harvest Finance: Scaling A Community To Match $1B In TVL At Its Height: Chain Reaction Host Tom Shaughnessy hosts Red, a community manager at Harvest Finance. Harvest automatically farms the highest yields in DeFi. They chatted reaching $1B in TVL at its height, scaling a community over time, competition between aggregators, the recent hack and more.
Patrick Manfra: The Alternative, Crypto Powered Yield Account: Tom Shaughnessy hosts Patrick Manfra, the co-founder of Outlet Finance. The two dive into Outlet Finance which is creating a brand new yield account linking the traditional world and crypto for users.
Robbie Ferguson: Building the Next Generation of NFT Infrastructure: Host Piers Kicks sits down for Episode 08 of Metaverse Musings with Robbie Ferguson, who is a Co-Founder of Immutable — the company behind Gods Unchained and the upcoming Immutable X exchange.
Mona El Isa: From Chasing Waves To Enabling Active Fund Management on Ethereum: Chain Reaction Host Tom Shaughnessy hosts Mona El Isa, the Co-Founder of Avant Garde Finance and Lead Developer for Melon.

The Erica Show

The Erica Show EP11 — Jeffrey Zirlin, Growth at Axie Infinity: In this episode, The Erica Show welcomes Jiho who is in charge of Growth at Axie Infinity, which recorded the number 1 NFT game on Ethereum by monthly and weekly active users. Jiho describes in detail the Axie Infinity basic structure, function of AXS tokens, and how it is like an ecosystem and providing a new concept of work. Also, Jiho elaborates on current challenges, impact of COVID-19, and upcoming milestones for the team.
The Erica Show EP10 — Bobby Ong, Co-founder & COO of Coingecko: The 10th guest of The Erica Show is Bobby Ong, the person behind Coingecko, which is top 1 data aggregator platform for cryptocurrency prices. In this video, Bobby explains the origin, evolution, and philosophy of Coingecko, and he shares the latest developments in the Coingecko platform. Also, Bobby shares his personal view on the general market and DeFi trend.
The Erica Show EP9 — Charles Hoskinson, CEO of Input Output: In this episode they invite Charles Hoskinson, who is leading Input Output and the Cardano project. Charles describes in detail about the history leading to Cardano, mainnet status of Cardano, relationship with ETC. He also addresses concerns on building in a slow pace, and questions on when Cardano will implement DeFi.
The Erica Show EP8 — Stani Kulechov, CEO of Aave: The Erica Show was celebrating Halloween with a special guest who is always surrounded by ghosts. She talked with Stani Kulechov, CEO of Aave. In this episode, Stani describes the general mechanism of Aave, definition of A tokens and flash loans, V2, Aave’s origin and sudden success story. Also, he explains how Aave has made its strong branding and community.