DeCent People

Follow Decential Media: Website: https://www.decential.io/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@decentialmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/decential_mediaTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@decential_mediaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/decential-media/Newsletter: https://decential.beehiiv.com/ Follow Matt Leising: https://twitter.com/mattleisingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alejo Pinto is a co-founder at Pontem, a product development studio building Move and Ethereum virtual machine-compatible applications and products. We spoke about his time at IBM where he worked on blockchain projects, his love of the video game Runescape when he was a kid and how Pontem is opening up the Ethereum ecosystem to decentralized applications that are built in computer languages like Move and Rust, rather than just in Solidity.@PontemNetworkFollow Decential Media: Website: https://www.decential.io/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@decentialmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/decential_mediaTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@decential_mediaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/decential-media/Newsletter: https://decential.beehiiv.com/ Follow Matt Leising: https://twitter.com/mattleisingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Justin is the CEO and co-founder of MoNA, a 3-D creator economy for the metaverse. In his previous roles at Magic Leap and DreamWorks Animation, Melillo helped build the world's first AR digital human AI and a volumetric capture experience with the Royal Shakespeare Company. An artist and creator of immersive AR and VR experiences, Melillo's AR lenses have been viewed more than 100 million times across Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Melillo has collaborated with a number of household name musicians throughout his career such as Lizzo, Pearl Jam, and Cardi B as well as designing stages for touring musicians including Drake and Charli XCX.Follow Decential Media: Website: https://www.decential.io/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@decentialmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/decential_mediaTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@decential_mediaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/decential-media/Newsletter: https://decential.beehiiv.com/ Follow Matt Leising: https://twitter.com/mattleising@justinmmelillo@monaverseSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Frank Chaparro is an acclaimed speaker, angel investor and host of "The Scoop" podcast. He was founding reporter at The Block, a research and news company. Previously, he served as a fintech and market structure reporter at Business Insider and started his career in marketing and communications at NASDAQ.Follow Decential Media: Website: https://www.decential.io/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@decentialmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/decential_mediaTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@decential_mediaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/decential-media/Newsletter: https://decential.beehiiv.com/ Follow Matt Leising: https://twitter.com/mattleisingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ian is co-founder and president of Ingredient X, the film and software development studio specializing in blockchain, DeFi and NFT technologies including the creation of Film.io, a decentralized filmmaking ecosystem that places Hollywood decision-making onto the blockchain and into the hands of creators and fans.Chris, co-founder and CTO of Ingredient X, was a pioneer in the early days of WordPress and is a member of the Infrastructure team for the Apache Software Foundation.Follow Decential Media: Website: https://www.decential.io/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@decentialmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/decential_mediaTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@decential_mediaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/decential-media/Newsletter: https://decential.beehiiv.com/ Follow Matt Leising: https://twitter.com/mattleisingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Paul is in charge of EY's initiatives and investments in blockchain technology across the company's consulting, audit and tax businesses. He led EY's first blockchain strategy engagement to examine how digital services, payments and the Internet of things are coming together in new ecosystems. We spoke of his long-geld belief that corporations should be building on public chains like Ethereum, and how that squares with his recent appointment as chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which is a proponent of private, permissioned blockchains.Follow Decential Media: Website: https://www.decential.io/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@decentialmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/decential_mediaTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@decential_mediaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/decential-media/Newsletter: https://decential.beehiiv.com/ Follow Matt Leising: https://twitter.com/mattleisingPaul Brody: @pbrodySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jess is the CEO of WalletConnect, the leading web3 communications and usability platform. Having been integrated with over 500 wallets and 6,000 apps, it facilitates millions of end-user connections each month. Today, it is also empowering developers to build engaging web3 experiences with a suite of SDKs: Web3Modal, Web3Wallet, and the Web3Inbox app that facilitates human-readable message delivery between apps and users.Follow Decential Media: Website: https://www.decential.io/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@decentialmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/decential_mediaTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@decential_mediaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/decential-media/Newsletter: https://decential.beehiiv.com/ Follow Matt Leising: https://twitter.com/mattleisingJess Houlgrave: @jesshoulgrave@WalletConnectSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Saneel Sreeni is a founding team member at Ritual, a decentralized AI startup. He was previously on the founding team at Alkimiya and a Venture Partner at Accomplice. He's also been around the block in crypto, doing both research at UC Berkeley and working across startups and venture capital firms. Follow Decential Media: Website: https://www.decential.io/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@decentialmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/decential_mediaTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@decential_mediaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/decential-media/Newsletter: https://decential.beehiiv.com/ Follow Matt Leising: https://twitter.com/mattleising@sanlsrni@ritualnethttps://ritual.net/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jesse Shrader is the co-founder and CEO of Amboss, the leading provider of Bitcoin Lightning Network data and insights. Formerly an engineer, Jesse is focused on supporting the ongoing development of the decentralized and social payments layer for Bitcoin.We spoke about his upbringing, his time at the Oregon Department of Transportation and the uncanny similarities to mapping the Lightning Network with Amboss and mapping highways and road systems.Jesse mentioned the Reflex product they have just launched, if you'd like more information on it check out rpo.dev.Follow Decential Media: Website: https://www.decential.io/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@decentialmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/decential_mediaTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@decential_mediaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/decential-media/Newsletter: https://decential.beehiiv.com/ Follow Matt Leising: https://twitter.com/mattleisingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Orchid Labs is a decentralized marketplace and virtual private network (VPN) provider. Steven, who goes by Seven, holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of Cambridge and worked previously at Sun Microsystems. Today, he's an active web3 investor and served as a partner at Pantera Capital, where he focused on blockchain investments. Additionally, he led the Digital Currency Fund at Fortress Investment Group and currently holds the position of CTO and venture partner at Fabric Ventures.Backed by Polychain, a16z and Sequoia Capital, Orchid initially started as an open-source, decentralized marketplace for bandwidth in 2017, with a strong emphasis on privacy. Under Steven's leadership, the team has since identified new areas for expansion. This month, they are announcing a DePIN initiative.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jim is the co-founder of Catalyst, a cross-chain protocol that is going into teting mode in a few months. He was previously held product roles at Aave, Unstoppable Domains and Ripple. We spoke about his childhood in Chicago and then San Diego, California and how a love an early desire to go into education tech eventually led him to web3.This episode originally aired in April 2023.Follow Decential Media: Website: https://www.decential.io/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@decentialmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/decential_mediaTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@decential_mediaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/decential-media/Newsletter: https://decential.beehiiv.com/ Follow Matt: https://twitter.com/mattleisingFollow Jim: https://twitter.com/0xJimSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

DeFi Dad is a power-user, educator, and investor in all things DeFi and Web3 at 4RC (Fourth Revolution Capital). He has been producing educational content on DeFi since 2019 including a popular YouTube channel and a weekly post in The Defiant called DeFi Alpha. He co-hosts The Edge Podcast where he helps listeners uncover the next generation of DeFi and Web3 protocols in a unique podcast-tutorial format. You can subscribe to his channels and learn from his wide range of content for free at defidad.com!This episode was released in October 2023.Follow Decential:Website: https://www.decential.io/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@decentialmediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/decential_mediaTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@decential_mediaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/decential-media/Newsletter: https://decential.beehiiv.com/ Follow Defi Dad: https://twitter.com/DeFi_DadFollow Matt Leising: https://twitter.com/mattleisingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Justin joins the show to talk about how brands are approaching the marketing opportunities in web3 worlds as well as centralized games like Roblox. With $600 million spent in "digital worlds" every month, companies like Forever21 and NBC are planting a firm foothold to reach those consumers.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eric joins the show to talk about the Chainalysis 2023 Crypto Crime Report. We discussed to overall drop in crime last year as general blockchain-based activity was down. Still, only 0.34% of all blockchain activity is criminal, according to Chainalysis. We also talked about ransomware, dark market and pig butchering activity. You don't want to miss this one!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We have a special episode today where we held a Twitter Spaces with Ruben Rojas, who is the artist we're featuring on Decential's short film series Decent Days.In the first film in the series we are proud to be featuring artist Ruben Rojas. In this episode Ruben tells his unflinching story and chronicles the crushing lows that came before the rewarding highs of finally following his passion to make art. Over the years Ruben has seen his work appear on dozens of murals, in fine art galleries around the world and featured in collabs with an impressive list of major brands. Ruben has also dipped his toes into the Web3 waters with a very successful NFT launch. The Decent Days series will focus on the humans behind the projects that show the positive contributions Web3 has in store for our culture. Ruben is the epitome of this and we hope you enjoy this film.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sicco is an experienced software development leader with a background in tech, politics, history, and sociology. We spoke about his early desire and then rejection of a career in journalism, how he loved becoming a software developer and his discovery of blockchain tech in 2021. Sicco has a passion for video, tabletop, and collectible card gaming, which informs his approach to teamwork and strategic thinking, and led to some very interesting observations about where blockchain can help — and hinder — gaming.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Raullen Chai is the Co-Founder and CEO of IoTeX, a modular Web3 infrastructure platform connecting smart devices and real-world data to blockchains. We spoke about the ongoing advances in what's now called DePIN, or decentralized physical infrastructure networks. A great DePIN project is Helium, a mobile phone provider that uses a decentralized network of hotspots to connect phones to each other. We also talked briefly about Chai's past as a white hat hacker and the philosophy of what IoTex wants to bring to the DePIN world.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jacqueline Burns Koven is the Head of Cyber Threat Intelligence at Chainalysis where she works with law enforcement, financial institutions, cryptocurrency businesses, and cybersecurity companies and is a member of the Ransomware Taskforce. Prior to joining Chainalysis, she served in the U.S. Intelligence Community. She holds a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University where she was a Research Fellow for Technology & Public Policy. This episode originally aired in October 2023.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jim is the co-founder of Catalyst, a cross-chain protocol that is going into testing mode in a few months. He was previously held product roles at Aave, Unstoppable Domains and Ripple. We spoke about his childhood in Chicago and then San Diego, California and how a love an early desire to go into education tech eventually led him to web3. This episode originally aired in April 2023.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dan O'Prey is Bakkt's Chief Product Officer, Crypto. He most recently served as Chief Strategy Officer as part of the executive team at Digital Asset, where he was responsible for defining the corporate strategy and aligning the top-level product strategy. Bakkt is the crypto futures exchange that delivers actual coins upon expiration of the futures contract, giving institutional or more conservative investors a way to accumulate crypto on a fully regulated marketplace. This episode originally aired in February 2023. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

An art professor for twenty years, Jeff Davis is a generative artist and now Chief Creative Officer at Art Blocks. Seeking greater precision in his artwork, in 1999, he began to use design software to explore structures and colors to create digital art. Since then, he's been inspired by the use of technology for creative expression, building generative systems that explore form and color within specified parameters.. We spoke about his love of math, growing up outside Chicago, being a art professor for 20 years and his celebrated entry into the NFT art world and his role at formative NFT platform Art Blocks. This episode originally aired in March 2023.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tim McCourt has served as CME Group's Senior Managing Director, Global Head of Financial and OTC Products since June 2023. He is responsible for leading the development and execution of the company's global interest rate, equity index, foreign exchange, OTC, cryptocurrency and alternative investment product strategies. Previously, he served as Senior Managing Director, Global Head of Equity and Foreign Exchange Products since February 2022. He serves on the CME Ventures Investment Committee and the S&P Dow Jones Indices U.S. Advisory Panel. Before joining CME Group in 2013 as Global Head of Equity Products, McCourt worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland, where he was responsible for building and managing the Americas Index and Delta One trading book. Prior to RBS, he held a senior trading role with JPMorgan in New York, spending 10 years with the Equity Derivatives Group. McCourt holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Boston College and an MBA from The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton SchoolSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For this week's episode of Decent People, we're bringing you a Decential Twitter Space with Jack O'Holleran. Jack co-founded Skale to help developers who want to use Ethereum but need faster transaction times and cheaper costs. That's exactly what Skale has done over the past several years, with five of the top 25 blockchain-based video games hosted on its network. We spoke about the right incentives for blockchain users, how Skale is able to vastly increase blockchain transaction times and what Jack sees in the near-terms for the wider Ethereum ecosystem. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Noam has been at Alchemy for the past two years where he's helped scale the engineering organization from five engineers to where it is today. He currently leads several engineering teams focused on delivering reliable, scalable web3 infrastructure that will enable developers to unlock crypto for the next billion users. Prior to Alchemy, Noam worked at Quibi and Google and is an alumnus of Pomona College.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For today's episode of Decent People, we're chatting with Alex Zozos, Associate General Council for Coinbase and formerly division of trading markets for the SEC, on a recent Decential Twitter Space. Alex helps us understand the current state of crypto regulation in the United States, what the future landscape could look like, and provides insight on current events in the industry. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Philip Martin is the Chief Security Officer for Coinbase, where he is responsible for developing the technology, processes and team that safely store one of the world's largest holdings of cryptocurrency. Prior to Coinbase, Philip built and led the Incident Response and Security Engineering teams at Palantir Technologies, developed new virtual infrastructure at Amazon A9 and spent a decade as a US Army counterintelligence agent in a range of foreign and domestic roles.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For this special episode, we're bringing you a recording of our Twitter space exploring the music industry, copyright laws, on-chain music, and folk values. Maceagon Voyce and Neil Berkeley join to discuss what it means for music to be folk and if folk icons like Bob Dylan genuinely lived up to that label.Read Keagon's exploration on whether web3 and blockchain can usher in a new era of common ownership in creative endeavors like music more akin to the folk era: https://www.decential.io/articles/this-machine-kills-copyright-minting-a-bob-dylan-song-as-a-way-to-resurrect-folk-traditionsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jacqueline Burns Koven is the Head of Cyber Threat Intelligence at Chainalysis where she works with law enforcement, financial institutions, cryptocurrency businesses, and cybersecurity companies and is a member of the Ransomware Taskforce. Prior to joining Chainalysis, she served in the U.S. Intelligence Community. She holds a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University where she was a Research Fellow for Technology & Public Policy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ryan Li is the co-founder of CyberConnect, a decentralized social network that's building and scaling the next generation of decentralized social media platforms. Its most well known platform is called Link3.co. CyberConnect raised $15 million led by Animoca Brands last year. Ryan holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from University of California, Berkeley.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Arthur Breitman is a co-founder of Tezos. Previously, Arthur was a research engineer for Google X and Waymo. In his early career, he worked as a quantitative analyst for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Arthur graduated from the École Polytechnique and the Courant Institute of NYU where he studied applied mathematics.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Andy Bromberg is the CEO of Beam and contributor to the Eco Protocol. Beam recently released a digital wallet based on account abstraction and we get into the jargon behind the different types of digital wallets, talk about his time at Stanford where he co-founded the Stanford Bitcoin Group and the failures of centralized crypto institutions last year.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

DeFi Dad is a power-user, educator, and investor in all things DeFi and Web3 at 4RC (Fourth Revolution Capital). He has been producing educational content on DeFi since 2019 including a popular YouTube channel and a weekly post in The Defiant called DeFi Alpha. He co-hosts The Edge Podcast where he helps listeners uncover the next generation of DeFi and Web3 protocols in a unique podcast-tutorial format. You can subscribe to his channels and learn from his wide range of content for free at defidad.com! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michael Wasyl began his career in 2012 as an Analyst at Bloomberg LP. In 2013, he was promoted to Senior Data Analyst - Bloomberg Vault Surveillance, where he managed high-value client relationships and business development/retention efforts. In 2018, he joined ConsenSys as Business Development and Sourcing Lead - Capital, where he sourced and evaluated investment opportunities and coordinated deal execution. In 2019, he co-founded DeerCreek, where he worked at the intersection of finance and technology to bring DeFi and other innovative financial products to market. In 2022, he co-founded Bracket Labs.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Zaki Manian is a Co-Founder of Sommelier, the decentralized asset management protocol whose mission is to make DeFi more accessible, profitable, and efficient for everyone. He's also a Co-Founder of Iqlusion, which provides infrastructure like a data center and a Cosmos validator for next-gen crypto technologies. Previously, Zaki helped build the Cosmos ecosystem, including launching the first public Cosmos testnet, and served as a Director of Tendermint. Zaki has been a leading developer in the blockchain space since 2014, when he taught himself cryptography and began contributing to projects including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, and Tendermint. Having studied history of science at the University of Pennsylvania, Zaki's skill sets in software engineering, programming, and computer science are largely self-taught.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Scott M. Lawin is CEO/COO of Candy Digital, Inc., a next-generation sports and culture digital asset platform, providing authentic objects and experiences that deepen fan engagement and connect people to their passions.Before launching Candy, Mr. Lawin founded Parametric, LP, a private investment and advisory firm focused on early-stage opportunities in blockchain, fintech, art, and real estate. From 2010-2017, Mr. Lawin was the Chief Operating Officer of Moore Capital Management, a $15bn global alternative investment management company. Prior to joining Moore, Mr. Lawin served as Chief Operating Officer of the Liquid Markets business at Fortress Investment Group following a 12-year career at Goldman, Sachs & Co.Mr. Lawin serves on the Boards of Art Money and Srinidhi Investment Group and is an Advisor to the MIT MET Fund, Stonyrock Partners, Dore Partnership, 24/7Office, and Streetlinx. He is the Founder of Museum of the Street, Vice-Chairman and Director of Hudson River Park Friends, and an Advisory Board member of JUST Capital and The Kitchen.Mr. Lawin earned his BS in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993 and is a Founding member of the Dean's Advisory Committee for the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. He and his family reside in Tribeca in New York City.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ben is the co-founder and CEO of Meso, a platform that makes bank-wallet transfers easy across crypto apps. He's spent over ten years building payments products as part of the early team at Braintree, leading product at Venmo, and working on Solana Pay for Solana Labs.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

After attending art school in Philadelphia, Bryan Brinkman set out to New York City to find his fortune as a graphic artist and animator. In a fascinating story of how he came to be one of the most well-known NFT artists working today, we have to travel through Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, Saturday Night Live and the wacky and always interesting world of blockchain-based art and animation. The market value of Brinkman's work is around $3 million and we talk about pushing the boundaries with what animated NFTs can achieve.This episode originally aired in June 2022See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tara Fung always had a curiosity about the world that led her to want to understand finance and economics. While an early job at the automaker Daimler wasn't exciting enough, she did pass the background check to join the CIA, though she didn't join the agency. She finished off her application the the Harvard Business School with her bridesmaids gathered around her on her wedding day and soon discovered the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. She co-founded Co:Create earlier this year to help non-fungible token (NFT) projects create sustainable revenue models. We talk about her upbringing in the South, how living in New York City isn't for everyone and the tech scene in Nashville, Tennessee.This episode originally aired in August 2022.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kanav started at Jump Trading Group as an intern helping build the early trading platform for the group's crypto efforts in 2016. After Kanav was hired full-time, he worked as a quantitative researcher/developer and then as director of strategic initiatives and digital assets. We talk about his upbringing in India, what kinds of Legos he had as a kid, and his early love of video games.This episode originally aired in January 2023.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Caitlin Long founded Custodia Bank in Wyoming to bridge the divide between businesses using or accepting cryptocurrencies and the traditional U.S. dollar based economy. Custodia was denied two applications to become a member of the Federal Reserve banking system and to have what's called a "master account" at the Fed. In response, Custodia has sued the Federal Reserve, claiming it discriminated against it because of its ties to crypto. We'll talk to Caitlin about how this all came about and what she thinks of her chances of succeeding in court.This episode originally aired in February 2023. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alex Van de Sande was one of the first people in South America to devote himself to Ethereum in its very early days. He helped build Mist, one of the first browsers on the new blockchain and was instrumental in helping resolve the DAO hack that occurred in June 2016. He's since gone on to champion the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS.This episode originally aired in January 2023See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nick Lambert, the CEO of Dock, a company providing decentralized digital identity solutions. Starting out with IBM and Sanmina-SCI, Nick moved into the decentralized space in 2011 with Scottish start-up MaidSafe and was their Chief Operating Officer for seven years. Nick is now the CEO of Dock Labs AG, the company behind the Dock network who has created Dock Certs, a platform that enables organizations to create and manage decentralized identities and verifiable credentials. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Richard Ma is the co-founder and CEO of Quantstamp, a web3 security company that has secured over $200B worth of digital assets for over 250 clients and performed more than 500 audits. Ma was a quant trader before co-founding Quantstamp. After losing Ethereum in the DAO hack in 2016, he was set on improving security in the Web3 space.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Erin Plante is the senior director of investigations and special projects at blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis. She's had a fascinating career in cyber security, including two stints in Hong Kong where she helped ferret out executives of Western corporations who may have been illegally bribing Chinese officials. Think clandestine, overnight work that imaged entire corporate digital libraries without leaving a trace. She also worked in Africa on corruption investigations where she first understood that cryptocurrency could alleviate the problem of migrant workers having to send bags of cash back to their families in other parts of the continent. At Chainalysis she's worked on fascinating investigations like combating Russian hackers who use the Bitcoin blockchain to ensure their malware never goes offline.This episode originally aired in March 2022.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Seth founded Bright Moments, an NFT gallery, in Venice, California at the height of the covid-19 pandemic. A serial entrepreneur and photographer, he quickly understood the power of non-fungible tokens but wanted the unveiling, or minting, of the digital assets to be a communal and in real life event. The response has been incredible and has now spanned quite a bit of the globe as Bright Moments has gone from Venice to temporary residences in New York, Berlin, London, Mexico City and Tokyo. This episode originally aired in November 2022See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We've got a special episode today as we bring you a recording of a Twitter Spaces we did that we called Crypto for Good. We spoke with three crypto projects that are focusing on changing the world for the better. Glo Dollar is a stablecoin project that is promising all of its profit to go to help end extreme poverty. Ecosapiens is an NFT project that allows retail users to buy carbon credits to help fight global warming. And Huma Finance is working on crypto loans that can help small to medium sized businesses around the world get access to capital that banks are unwilling to lend. Thanks to my colleagues Amanda Smith and Stephen Laddin for joining me on the Spaces discussion. Here are the Decential stories we've done on Glo Dollar, Ecosapiens and Huma in case you missed them.Crypto for Good: How Glo Dollar Plans to Use a Stablecoin to Help End Extreme PovertyEcosapiens Battle Climate Change by Offering Carbon Credits as NFTsFrom Facebook to ‘DeFi for the 99 Percent,' Erbil Karaman and Huma Are Decentralizing AccessSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Oleksandr is a co-founder and chief product officer at Blink Finance. For the past 9 years, he worked as an algorithmic trader, portfolio and fund manager in the traditional finance and crypto space. We spoke about the war in Ukraine's impact on Blink, the pros and cons of under collateralized trading and what's its like to be a prime broker in the crypto world.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jack O'Holleran is co-founder and chief executive officer of SKALE Labs, the team behind SKALE, a blockchain that's designed for ultra-fast, secure, user-centric Ethereum scaling. Jack first started working with digital currencies in 2008 and we talked about his time playing first team football for the Nebraska Cornhuskers, how the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected Skale's development and how AI can help blockchain development. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Huf is the co-founder of Pear Protocol, a new decentralized exchange on Arbitrum that plans to offer trading pairs (get it?) of digital assets where one side of the trade is long and the other is short. He previously worked for 11 years on the trading floor for a large international investment bank, where his clients included some of the UK's largest asset managers and he specialized in equity derivatives and volatility markets. He went full time into DeFi in 2019 and we talk about the vast differences between traditional finance and the web3 version, about how crypto trades on narratives and how regulation is a major concern for projects such as Pear Protocol. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jason Shah is the head of growth at Alchemy, a web3 developer platform that powers most of the NFT market and a lot more web3 infrastructure. Shah previously led product teams at Airbnb, Amazon, and Microsoft and we spoke about the differences in web2 centralized firms and the decentralized goal of web3.Jason's personal web site jasonshah.me on Twitter @jasonyogeshshah or @0xShah.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ohm Shah is the co-founder and co-CEO of Wallet Guard which is trying to make the digital world of web3 safer and easier to use. He studied at Kent State University and got one of his first computer security jobs there. He went on to work at Accenture before co-founding Wallet Guard, which is a browser extension that scans for malicious web sites that want to drain your digital wallet. We talk about all of that, the mistakes Kevin Rose made in losing millions of dollars in NFTs and what it will take to get mass adoption in crypto. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.