Around The Coin

Today we interview Sean De Clercq - he is the founder and CEO of Kickfurther. Sean has years of experience in the supply chain industry. When seeking financing for his merchandising company, he came up with the original idea behind Kickfurther.

Today we interview Dustin Kirkland - Dustin is the Chief Product Officer at Apex Clearing. As CPO, Dustin is responsible for defining the vision and evolving the strategy of Apex’s product portfolio. With 20 years of experience in the software and technology industry, Dustin has worked for some of the largest technology firms—Google and IBM, along with innovative startups—Gazzang, acquired by Cloudera, and Canonical, which is the company behind Ubuntu. His team of product managers interface with Apex customers and Apex engineers on a daily basis, ensuring quality, excellence, completeness, and timely delivery of the product release cycles. Apex Clearing is a custody and clearing engine that’s powering the future of digital wealth management. Our proprietary enterprise-grade technology delivers speed, efficiency and flexibility to firms ranging from innovative start-ups to blue-chip brands focused on transformation to capture a new generation of investors. We help our clients provide the seamless digital experiences today’s consumers expect with the throughput and scalability needed by fast-growing, high-volume financial services businesses. Founded in 2012, Apex Clearing is registered with the SEC, a member of FINRA and a Participant in SIPC.

Jazear Brooks is the former Lead Architect at Thorchain, current Sif Benevolent at SifChain. Jazear is a computer scientist (BS Computer Science and Economics from Yale) with a decade of leadership and engineering experience working within the technology and financial services industry. Before moving into blockchain, Jazear held positions at Microsoft, Glassboard, Pixorial, and Madrone (a hedge fund analytics company). Blockchain became Jazear's paradise when he was able to combine his skill set in engineering and economics to develop novel cryptoeconomic models and trading strategies.

Today we interview Ryan Conway, SVP, Head of Business Development & Strategic Partnerships at Oxygen. In his current role, he leads growth and partner efforts, focusing on product, distribution and branding, in addition to overseeing public relations, content, and social media. Prior to Oxygen, he worked at Mastercard in Digital Partnerships, the face of the network to Silicon Valley where he owned global relationships with some of the most recognizable names in FinTech today. A payments veteran, he has held a series of roles in business development and product at BlueSnap and Worldpay, the latter during a hyper growth phase that culminated in the largest IPO on the FTSE in 2015. He speaks regularly on financial technology, startups and payments and writes frequently on FinTech and startups for top publications (Financial Times). Conway received his MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and holds a B.S degree in Finance from Arizona State University.

Today we interview Denko Mancheski, founder and CEO of Reef Finance (reef.finance). Denko has been in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry for around 6 years as a developer - working with many notable technologies including NXT blockchain, Bitshares, Steem as well as EOS. He now runs Reef Finance, a hub for Decentralized Finance running on Polkadot. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. DeFi Code www.defi-code.com Go-to-market agency for cryptocurrency companies. Make your project stand out and gain maximum impact in the industry.

Today we interview Geoff McCabe (https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffmccabe) - CEO of The Divi Project (diviproject.org). He also owns businesses in virtual reality, gaming, two hotels, and a blockchain-based media company, LightingWorks.io Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. DeFi Code www.defi-code.com Go-to-market agency for cryptocurrency companies. Make your project stand out and gain maximum impact in the industry.

Today we interview Dov Marmor, COO, Railsbank N. America. Dov led two of the top FinTech platform businesses in banking and international payments. Formerly GM and Head of BaaS at Green Dot, Dov grew that business 3X over 2.5 years, launching enterprise programs including Intuit TurboCard, Uber Debit/Money, Stash Banking, Wealthfront Debit, and many others. Prior to that, he launched the US business of Currencycloud, building over 20 new programs and expanding the teams and operational processes for scale. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. DeFi Code www.defi-code.com Go-to-market agency for cryptocurrency companies. Make your project stand out and gain maximum impact in the industry.

Albert Saniger is the founder and CEO at nate. An experienced coder at a young age, Albert worked through school by teaching students to code – some going on to win national competitions under his guidance. While expanding his knowledge of computing systems, these early teaching experiences also inspired an interest in furthering human potential and empowering personal achievements. After getting his MBA at London Business School and working at Amazon, Albert set out to explore how intelligent automation could facilitate human-driven decisions. In 2018, Albert founded nate and worked with a young team of engineers to develop the app and its AI technology – introducing the first product to automate the mobile checkout process at any online retailer on behalf of a customer. By April 2020, nate had closed the largest series seed round for a consumer software company of the year and launched to the public that summer. Albert’s desire to foster individual potential extended to his approach to building his team, valuing character over experience and hiring early talent. Furthermore honoring the support he received from mentors in the beginning stages of the company, Albert established the nate career accelerator to offer students and early graduates management experience, opportunities for individual media exposure and contribution to high level brand strategy and execution. Albert has been vocal on the topics of workforce transformation, inclusive work culture and leading a new social age of ecommerce and has been featured as a speaker at Brown Entrepreneurship Program and Dive In podcast, Yale’s Elmseed Enterprise Fund, Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs, and other distinct communities and institutions including NYU, Wharton, Fordham, Stanford Business School, Syracuse University’s iSchool, Rutgers, and others. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. DeFi Code www.defi-code.com Go-to-market agency for cryptocurrency companies. Make your project stand out and gain maximum impact in the industry.

Kinsa Durst interviews Edmund Lowell, founder and CEO of KYC-Chain, and an advisor to SelfKey Foundation. Originally from the United States, graduating from Northeastern University in Boston Massachusetts where he studied law, finance and technology, Edmund Lowell is a serial entrepreneur living in Asia since 2011, innovating at the crossroads of finance, technology and legal fields. Edmund has built a number of Fintech and RegTech products during this time including Incorporations.io, KYC-Chain.com, Passports.io and SelfKey.org The SelfKey foundation raised 21m USD during an 11 minute public sale for the sale of the native KEY utility token. The SelfKey software has processed KYC for over 150,000 identity owners and over $200m USD in transaction volume since Q4 2017. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. DeFi Code www.defi-code.com Go-to-market agency for cryptocurrency companies. Make your project stand out and gain maximum impact in the industry.

Kinsa Durst interviews Prashant Fuloria, CEO of Fundbox. Prashant became CEO of Fundbox in 2020, after serving as COO and CPO. He joined Fundbox in 2016 from Yahoo, where he was SVP of Advertising Products. Prashant came to Yahoo through the acquisition of Flurry, then the world’s largest mobile analytics platform, where he was CPO. Before Flurry, he was Senior Product Director at Facebook, responsible for advertising products and monetizing the Facebook platform. Prior to that, Prashant was an early product leader at Google where he built the company’s global billing and payment network and ran all products for the APAC region. Prashant holds a B. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, where he was the President’s Gold Medalist. He also holds a Ph.D. in Business with a Minor in Engineering-Economic Systems & Operations Research, an MA in Business Research, and an MS in Statistics, all from Stanford University. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. DeFi Code www.defi-code.com Go-to-market agency for cryptocurrency companies. Make your project stand out and gain maximum impact in the industry.

In this episode, Faisal Khan gets a chance to sit down with Ray Youssef, CEO, and Co-founder of Paxful to learn how he got started with the idea of Paxful and what his company is doing to eliminate "financial apartheid" as he calls it.

In this episode Faisal Khan interviews Clay Wilkes, who is the founder and CEO of Galileo Financial Technologies. Galileo FT is a company that has been around for 20 years and is pretty much the go to company for the world most innovative fintechs. Galileo offers, what I would call a super API, one unified API that connects to it all and offers all sort of banking solutions including regulatory coverage in multiple markets.

Kinsa Durst interviews John Colthart. John has made clients successful in every major market worldwide during his 17-year career in technology leading world-class sales and professional services organizations. This started after his departure as a corporate finance and accounting practitioner in 2000 so he could grow a startup to +425 employees and exit to IBM with a role of VP Sales Operations in 2010. During his stay at IBM, John held global roles running sales enablement, offering management and design leadership within the IBM Analytics division. He strives to lead clients to effectively use analytics to change the course of their business. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. DeFi Code www.defi-code.com Go-to-market agency for cryptocurrency companies. Make your project stand out and gain maximum impact in the industry.

Mike Townsend interviews Roham Gharegozlou. Roham is the CEO of Dapper Labs and the founder of Axiom Zen, the award-winning emerging technology venture studio behind Dapper Labs. Dapper Labs is the creator of CryptoKitties, the world’s most popular consumer blockchain experience, with over 3M transactions on the Ethereum network – more than any smart contract that’s not a cryptocurrency exchange. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem www.redeeem.com - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Mike Townsend interviews Kayvan Alikhani. Kayvan is the CEO and co-founder of Compliance.ai. Kayvan has more than 25 years of experience in hi-tech, Kayvan leads operations, strategy, sales, and marketing for Compliance.ai. Most recently, Kayvan led the identity strategy at RSA, and represented EMC on various industry alliances such as the FIDO board. A serial entrepreneur as well, Kayvan was the co-founder and CEO of PassBan (acquired by RSA), a company focused on mobile identity assurance. He also led strategy at LiteScape (as CTO and later as CEO), creating security and mobile identity solutions for VOIP based networks. He was co-founder and CTO at BeNotified, a cloud mobile communication service provider. Prior to that, Kayvan co-founded AVIRNEX, a cloud-based enhanced fixed and mobile communication service provider. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem www.redeeem.com - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Mike Townsend interviews James Gillingham. James is the Co-Founder and CEO of Finxflo, the world’s first hybrid aggregator and cryptocurrency brokerage firm. Under his leadership, Finxflo has embarked on a new partnership with leading blockchain luminaries, Tron and JustSwap, to build the world’s first DeFi protocol aggregator. During his 15 years’ of experience in financial markets, FinTech and entrepreneurship, James has managed over $4 billion worth of funds. An accomplished entrepreneur, he was the force behind the building of JageroFX, a trading algorithm start-up that he built up and led through a successful buy-out. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem www.redeeem.com - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Mike Townsend interviews Kinsa Durst. Kinsa is the founder of DeFi Code, a consulting firm for developing and executing global go-to-market strategy for blockchain and cryptocurrency companies. Coming from a diverse cultural background, he leverages his extensive experience working with companies in the U.S., China, and Korea to help companies establish their unique value and presence in the industry. He has always been passionate about bridging multiple cultures, and loves connecting with new people and learning about their perspective of the world. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem www.redeeem.com - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Mike Townsend interviews Daniyal Inamullah. Daniyal is the Head of Capital Markets at Cred and Co-Founder for the Glitter of Hope Foundation. Daniyal has spent his career specializing in mergers & acquisitions for energy companies at EY and Houlihan Lokey before he focused his career on democratizing financial services by leveraging blockchain technology. In his current role at Cred, Daniyal works on optimizing Cred's capital markets through facilitating partnerships and product ideation. Cred's mission is to provide digital asset hodlers the tools to access financial services at the micro level and take control of their financial future. Daniyal graduated from Emory University and obtained his MBA from the University of Houston. He is a CFA Charterholder. You can find more of his blog posts at financechai.com. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem www.redeeem.com - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Mike Townsend interviews Moaz Hamid. Moaz is a mission-driven technologist and strategist, solving for the future of jobs and medicine, and the role of Robotics and AI. He is mvmtAi, a health tech startup, founder and CEO. Advisor for SoftBank Robotics, and serves on, and Robotics WG member, for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Moaz is also advisor and mentor for seed stage startups for Yellow (accelerator) by Snap Inc., and early stage startups and chair of the advisory board for Startup Boost (pre-accelerator), as well as, LA underserved youth entrepreneurship program, embarcLA. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem www.redeeem.com - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Mike Townsend interviews Ned Phillips. Started his Fintech journey with E*TRADE as one of the very first online brokers and now an entrepreneur, Ned Phillips is the founder and chief executive officer of Bambu. Ned had the opportunity to experience the first dot-com boom with one of the original FinTech companies as well as was a consultant to 8Securities when they launched the first robo-advisor in Asia. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem www.redeeem.com - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Joe Bayen is CEO at Grow Credit. Over the past decade, Joe has specialized in underwriting, credit score improvement, user acquisition, and monetization. Grow Credit helps consumers establish or build credit using a MasterCard designed to exclusively process subscription payments. The platform enables consumers with thin credit or no credit files to seamlessly establish a credit history using a Netflix, Pandora, or Xbox live account. Joe previously founded at ICS Mobile Inc, the developer behind Free App A Day, a mobile application marketing platform with 12M users worldwide that was bootstrapped to $18.3M in total revenue. Notable clients included Disney, Electronic Arts, Groupon, and Kabam. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem www.redeeem.com - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Mike Townsend interviews Jareau Wadé, a payments entrepreneur and recovering engineer based in Atlanta, GA. He currently runs growth and marketing at payments infrastructure company, Finix. Prior, Jareau lead commerce and visual search business development for Pinterest and co-founded Balanced, a payments API company that exited to Stripe in 2015. Jareau was also the first employee and head of data acquisition at Milo.com, a local shopping search engine acquired by eBay in 2010. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem www.redeeem.com - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Mike Townsend interviews Xiaohan Zhu, CEO of Meter.io. Xiaohan Zhu is an engineer by training, he was born and raised in Chine, and moved the US to go to graduate school at UC San Diego, and eventually got his MBA at Wharton before working as an engineer at Microsoft and Motorola. In 2016 he became fascinated with cryptocurrency and global finance and started ZMT Capital investing in Blockchain, and ICOs. In 2018 Xiaohan started Meter.io to further enable of the crypto community by using the cost of production and the minor's behavior and the proof of work system as the key piece of feedback that enables stable pricing of their Meter token. Learn more about what makes Meter special on the deep dive interview! Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem https://redeeem.click/qdza - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

In this engaging interview Mike Townsend interviews Sunayna Tuteja, Head of Digital Assets and Blockchain at TD Ameritrade. With more than ten years of diverse global experience, she has a proven record for building new ventures from scratch and leading the kind of change that is critical in shaping the future of business. In her current role, Sunayna is responsible for building a scalable blockchain and crypto practice within TD Ameritrade. This rapidly growing practice is inclusive of partnerships, investments and products to harness the growing power of blockchain technology. Through partnering with the Stanford Innovation Lab, she works closely with the start-up and VC communities helping to advance public and corporate innovation. Outside of work and school, you can find Sunayna adventuring the skies in her Cessna. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem https://redeeem.click/qdza - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Kyle Samani and Mike Townsend sit down and chat about how cryptocurrency will influence the US and global economy over the coming years. Kyle gives us the down low on companies and crypto projects he's excited about, and how he thinks about making investment decisions.  Kyle Samani is a co-founder and managing partner at Multicoin Capital, a thesis-driven investment firm that invests in cryptocurrencies, tokens, and blockchain companies. Prior to Multicoin Capital, Kyle founded Pristine, a health IT startup that was later acquired by Upskill. Kyle holds degrees in Finance and Management from NYU, and is widely recognized in the crypto ecosystem for his writing and system-level analysis. Sponsors: Otter Labs www.hireotter.com - Hire great and inexpensive developer with staff augmentation through Otter. Redeeem https://redeeem.click/qdza - Redeeem is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange that lets you save 15% or more on gift cards using Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. We promise you'll learn a lot on this show, tune in!

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Alex Bouaziz, the founder and CEO of Deel. Alex is a true international entrepreneur, having been born and raised in Paris, France, he then went to undergraduate university in Tel Aviv, Israel, studying civil and environmental engineering. We chatted about his time getting a master degree at MIT, and starting on his PhD researching water treatment. The conversation moved quickly into the future of remote work, how companies are hiring now, what countries have the best and worse employment laws, and what a long term vision for Deel could look like to improve the international standard for employment.  The world looks a lot different today than it did 50 years ago and it will look just as different 50 years in the future, learn what those differences are and more on the show!

In this show Mike Townsend interviews Chris McAlary, the CEO of Coin Cloud, the world’s largest network of two-way digital currency kiosks. From his early days as a Bitcoin miner to now, he is a pioneer in the cryptocurrency industry. When Robocoin installed the world’s first Bitcoin ATM in Vancouver, BC, in 2013, McAlary wondered why not the US. After much research and collaboration, he installed the first Coin Cloud BTM on the Las Vegas Strip in 2014 – built by Robocoin, branded by Coin Cloud, and serviced by McAlary himself. Today, Coin Cloud is the largest Bitcoin ATM company in the nation, with over 800 machines (and growing constantly), all of which allow two-way transactions of Bitcoin and 29 altcoins. Coin Cloud’s first international expansion is Brazil, offering that country the first opportunity ever to purchase digital currency with cash.

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Ljuba Youngblom, the co-founder and CEO of Hometown, an early stage startup reimagining local news from the ground up. Prior to that, Ljuba co-founded the connected car startup Automatic Labs, which was acquired by SiriusXM in 2017. He’s a UX designer, mentor, and pragmatic do-gooder living in Oakland, California.  In the show we go into depth on local politics, what motivates people to vote, to contribute to their local economies, and what fascinating new techniques Hometown is using to improve democracy on a local level. Tune in and share if you enjoyed the show!

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Jason Butcher, CEO of CoinPayments. Jason took over as CEO after running HODLtech, a crypto consultancy. He now leads CoinPayments which is most known for being a leader in facilitating cryptocurrency payments for businesses. CoinPayments has over 1800 crypto options, over 100,000 merchant customers, processing over $100M per month, which has increased over 30% since the Coronavirus hit. We talked about why crypto companies incorporate off shore to the Cayman Islands or Malta, and all the pros and cons that go along with that decision. We talk about the governmental policies regarding crypto and what we should be thinking about now that will prevent mistakes down the road. We also dive into what crypto opportunities he sees on the horizon and much more!

In this show Mike Townsend interviews Nelson Chu, founder and CEO of Cadence. Nelson is a 3x startup founder with several years of experience at the top investment management firms, including Bank of America and BlackRock. Prior to Cadence, he founded a strategy consulting firm specializing in helping companies build products and raise capital for growth, creating over $1B in equity value. He currently serves as an advisor to an ultra high net worth family office and is an active angel investor, with notable investments including BlockFi, Cadre, Care/Of, Clover Health, dv01, Tala, and Uala. This was a highly educational podcast, as Nelson explains how the highly complex market of business lending works, from the small business loans, personal loans, and all the way up to the banks and governments. Nelson gives us his thoughts on how the 2008 financial crisis changed the way money flows throughout the system now. We hear that Cadence has $1.6 issuance volume and $40M in securitization, and self-proclaimed shortest duration, highest yield (30%) flexible cheap growth capital... give it a try and decide for yourself! As always, reach out if you'd like to be on the show, or have guest recommendations.

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Felix Feng, founder of Set Protocol. He previously worked at 21.co (acquired by Coinbase) and Radius, and graduated from UC Berkeley. We learn how Felix came up with the idea for Set Protocol and how how raised money and grew his team. Set Protocol basically allows you to buy and sell crypto management strategies for the average person, similar to how an ETF works on wall street. Check it out at Set Protocol. In the show we talk about what Set Protocol, which is a ERC20 token of crypto assets that automatically rebalances based on the strategy, who is using it, who's benefiting. We discuss why in 2017 lots of ICO’s were returning nearly 100x and it made sense to diversify, but in 2018/19 the long tail fell out of favor. There is a great article, How Set Protocol Works Under the Hood that explains more in detail about Set Protocol. We promise you'll learn a lot on this show, tune in!

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Mark Thomas, CEO and founder of ZenSports. ZenSports is a mobile peer-to-peer sports betting marketplace where anyone can create and accept sports bets with anyone else in the world, without the need for a centralized bookmaker. Mike and Mark uncover the history of betting, discuss the future of sports coming out of Coronavirus, and talk about what the strategies that the best sports betters use to win 55% of their bets. We also learn about the history of betting regulation and other high potential cryptocurrency companies.

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Chris Maurice, CEO and co-founder of Yellow Card, a cryptocurrency exchange operating across Africa. In high school, Chris started an SEO consulting firm which helped optimize over 140 websites on Google, including Prezi.com. In college, he started a manufacturing and supply chain logistics company producing clothing and shoes out of a factory in Pakistan. As a boy from Southern Louisiana who had been on a plane four times before founding Yellow Card, he then flew to Nigeria on two weeks' notice to build a company bringing Bitcoin to everyone. Hear the story of how Chris launched a bitcoin business in Africa, and how he met Jack Dorsey, (CEO of Twitter and Square), in Africa.

In this interview, Mike Townsend interviews Greg Kolodziejzyk, founder of AlgoLab. In his 20's Greg quit his job at a local oil company based out of Calgary Albert and started his own business as a freelance graphic designer. In 1994 his company, Image Club, was purchased for millions, and Greg became financially independent. With plenty of time on his hands, Greg shifted his focus to endurance training and completed 12 Ironman Triathlons, and multiple 100 mile run races in Alaska. Unlike most people, Greg has an insatiable appetite for pushing the limit, and so naturally the next goal became to do something that had never been done before... breaking world records! We discuss Greg's adventures breaking multiple Guinness World Records including the farthest distance traveled in 24 hours by human power on land and separately on water. In the last 30 minutes of the show, we shift gears and learn about how Greg built AlgoLab, one of the best performing algorithmic futures trading platforms on the market. Greg talks about how he came up with the idea, why futures are an especially great investment category, and some of the reasons AlgoLab is doing it better than anyone else out there.

Today, ARYZE is passionately led by Jack and is successfully establishing itself in the industry. The values ‘inclusivity’, and ‘transparency’ are embedded in the company’s culture and show what ARYZE is truly about. The company is working towards solving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal Numbers 9, 10, and 16. It does so by building a secure financial platform that is accessible to the financially excluded, and where costs are brought to near zero.

In this interview, Mike Townsend interviews Ethan Austin, who oversees all operations at the Techstars & Western Union Accelerator. This Techstars program focuses on investing in startups looking to shape the future of money. Ethan and Mike talk about the history of Western Union, which is now about 170 years old and dominated the American telegraph industry in both the 19th and 20th centuries.

In our latest edition, Nako Mbelle interviews to whom we refer to as the brand ambassador or Bitcoin evangelist: Andreas M. Antonopoulos. Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a critically-acclaimed best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts. Andreas makes complex subjects accessible and easy to understand. He is known for delivering electric talks that combine economics, psychology, technology, and game theory with current events, personal anecdote, and historical precedent—effortlessly transliterating the complex issues of blockchain technology out of the abstract and into the real world.

You can't seem to pick up any Fintech aka banking & payments magazine or blog without the mention of the word, 'financial inclusion'. Depending on whom you talk to, the number of financially excluded population is anywhere from 2.5 Billion people to 1.5 Billion. World Bank Group defines financial inclusion as individuals (and businesses) that have access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs - such as transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance - delivered in a responsible and sustainable way. Most of this is done through microfinance banks. These microfinance basically offer a very specialized category of financial services to those who lack access to conventional banking and related services. One such institution that is helping solve this problem of underbanked/unbanked is FINCA. FINCA's network of 20 community-based microfinance institutions and banks use fintech to expand financial inclusion, offering innovative, responsible and impactful financial services to low-income clients. I'm very honored to have Andrée Simon who is the President& CEO of FINACA Impact Finance, based out of Washington DC.

In this interview Mike Townsend talks to Kyle Hill, which is a special episode because Kyle and Mike are co-founders of Redeeem (trusted peer-to-peer crypto gift card exchange), and have started 3 startups over the last 8 years together. Previous to Redeeem, they raised $23M for HomeHero, a tech-enabled home care marketplace. They talk about how to work successfully together as a team, the mission and story of Redeeem, as well as a variety of topics related to bitcoin, government regulation, and upcoming exciting blockchain projects.

In this interview Mike Townsend interviews Ethan, who talks about his journey from CTO of VC funded startup, Overnight, to partner of AGE Crypto hedge fund. Learn about the differences between a VC fund and a crypto hedge fund, as well as how many exist what specific methods hedge funds use to provide returns for their LPs. Ethan walks us through a typical day, researching github projects, talking to developers of tokens, building tools that automate crypto trading, as well as much more.

In this podcast, Nako Mbelle interviews Yan Pritzker the author of Inventing Bitcoin and I discuss what makes bitcoin a revolutionary tech; and why he left his full-time CTO position at his startup to devote 100% of his time to Bitcoin. Yan’s book Inventing Bitcoin is written for non-technical people who want to better understand bitcoin at a deeper level and go beyond the superficial talking points of price and profit.

In this episode Mike Townsend visited the offices of SFOX to interview Founder George Melika and Head of Growth Danny Kim in their offices in Playa Vista, California. SFOX raised $23M in VC from Y Combinator, Social Capital, Tribe Capital among others to build the easiest tool to access the digital cryptocurrency market. We discussed exchange trading, how crypto companies can successfully work with banks, and underrated projects and people working in crypto. Hope you enjoy the conversation and let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions for our next episode.

This show focuses on the FATF, the Financial Action Task Force. We discuss why the organization – that remains unknown to many finance and payments professionals and even to AML/CFT compliance specialists, is so powerful and important. We discuss the basics: why was it created? What are FATF’s goals? What are the down sides or unintended consequences of the standards it sets? We discuss the effects of non-compliance on countries and the inner workings of the mutual evaluation process that countries go through. Finally, we touch upon the questions of political influence, organizational overreach and even bullying through FATF decision making.

Nako interviews David Gerard, a Bitcoin critic. They talk about the technological superiority complex of some Bitcoin maximalists; Bitcoin's energy inefficiencies and whether crypto mass adoption is a pipe dream or closer to becoming a reality because of the Lightning Network.

This week Faisal Khan sits down with Dr. Mara Wesseling (our newest co-host) and we discuss the world of compliance. This show offers a first introduction to AML/CFT compliance (Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism). It touches upon what compliance stands for and who needs to do it. How big and relevant is today's compliance industry? What to make of the unhappy marriage of placing AML and CFT under one legal umbrella? The show also looks into the history of the AML/CFT legal framework and what makes it important now. By reflecting upon the past 30 years of AML regulation and almost 20 years of the War on Terrorism Financing, the effectiveness question remains on the table and the call for a new approach - AML/CFT 2.0 - becomes louder.

In this episode of Around The Coin, Faisal & Nako get on the air to continue with their BTC (Behind The Coin) series. We discuss the very basics of the Lightning Network and what it means for normals folks like you and I (not to mention Bitcoin enthusiasts). We try to cover this without getting technical. Let us know how we did?

In this episode, Faisal and Malini discuss financial inclusion beyond its basic definition, and talk through the fundamental building blocks required for a more financially 'inclusive' world.

This week the trio is back on the air. Brian and Mike discuss what does capitalism and socialism mean in today's world? (Faisal unfortunately, dropped out due to technical reasons). We discuss the role of centralized governments and economic frameworks in areas such as healthcare, education, and much more. A wide-ranging high paced conversation that could have lasted for hours!

Description: Mike Townsend sits down with Marc Bhargava. Marc is the founder of Tagomi, the first electronic agency prime brokerage in the digital assets space. We discuss why now is the perfect time to be building in crypto, what Marc's most contrarian crypto views are, and other thought-provoking ideas in the space. Tune in and enjoy!

The Great Depression: How the Great Depression impacted our modern financial world. Mike and Brian dissect events that played a major role in the Great Depression such as the telephone, prohibition, food subsidies, bank closures, wage laws and more. We reflect on how each of these policy changes shaped the world we live in today and how you can predict the future by understanding cycles of the past. Links: https://www.thebalance.com/the-great-depression-of-1929-3306033 https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_R._Dewey

This week Mike Townsend sits down with Jack Jia of Wyre. Jack is the founding employee at Wyre and in this show we talk about the inspiration for the idea which largely came from a PayPal hackathon in 2015. We talk about how Wyre uses bitcoin behind the scene to enable much faster and cheaper foreign exchange. We also spoke about Jack's experience living and doing business in China and how he sees the crypto landscape unfolding in the US and globally.