Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points. This week Bitcoin continues to fall and is now in danger of breaking the key US$40,000 price level. The fall was triggered by the China Evergrande crisis which has put traders into risk-off mode. Meanwhile, in the U.S. Gary Gensler has continued his war of words against crypto projects. He has made it clear that the overwhelming majority of altcoins are securities and in danger of being regulated as such.  Supporting links: Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Frank Miller is a legend in comics, graphic novels, and film. Known for his hard-boiled storytelling and gritty film noir aesthetic, Frank is the creative force behind iconic titles such as The Dark Knight Returns, Daredevil, 300, and Sin City. Frank is about to drop an NFT collection based on the Sin City universe. Why you should listen: The Sin City books have won numerous awards, including six Eisner Awards, for Best Writer/Artist, Best Graphic Novel Reprint, Best Cartoonist, Best Cover Artist, Best Limited Series, and Best Short Story. Miller made his feature film directorial debut in 2005 with Sin City, the adaptation of his graphic novel, which he co-directed with Robert Rodriguez. The critically acclaimed film was nominated for a Palme d'Or at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. The Sin City NFTs will be available September 29 from www.FrankMiller.io. There are 11 pieces, staggered over time, some are open editions, some are auction-based.  The first NFT will be one of Frank’s favorite pieces - an in real life, laser engraved Crystal piece featuring Marv limited to 1000.   Supporting links: Frank Miller Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points. This week Bitcoin is back at $48,000 and just posted a Golden Cross. Is Bitcoin warming up for a bullish Q4? Meanwhile, Gary Gensler is in a war of words with Coinbase, and OpenSea’s head of product was caught insider trading NFTs. Supporting links: Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Chris Fortier is Vice President of Product at Rally, a project built on Ethereum that helps creators develop economic relationships with their audiences by launching their own crypto social tokens and NFTs. Why you should listen: Rally builds tools for creators to launch and grow their crypto economies. Rally started with social tokens but has always imagined a world where a creator’s crypto economy included both fungible tokens and NFTs. Fans want reasons to buy, use and hold social tokens and creators have pioneered countless ways to power experiences with those tokens. But they also want tangible goods and services — as well as experiences — that they can own in exchange for those social tokens. NFTs and social tokens paired together tie the creator’s crypto economy into a cohesive whole. Rally is building NFT capabilities that allow creators to focus on utility and collectability versus scarcity. They believe that the true economic value of NFTs will come from creators and their fans using NFTs to drive connections, particularly if creators allow more of their fan-base to participate. By enabling these utility-based NFT use cases, Rally is opening up a world for creators to experiment in their engagements with their fans and focus on offerings that delight their broader fan base rather than a small set of deep-pocketed speculators. Supporting links: Rally Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Maestro Bignose is a co-founder of Elyseos, a decentralized ecosystem designed to support the evolving Sacramental Medicine space. Sacramental medicines include psychedelic plants and fungi. The Elyseos DAO supports the evolving ecosystem with compassionate feedback loops incentivizing collaboration and decentralization. Why you should listen: As people search for meaning, and alternative ways of healing, Sacramental Medicines are bursting into the mainstream. The risks in this emergence include dilution, corruption, decay, centralization, control, and capture. Middlemen and ‘authorities’ can excessively appropriate the value generated while excluding dedicated servants, discoverers, and long-time practitioners. Maestro Bignose compares the new world of blockchain and Web3 to the ancient world of shamans. He says, “It is a wonderful meeting between one unregulated sphere so ancient it is forgotten by the mainstream and another unregulated sphere just birthing and completely nascent. Decentralized ledgers bypass the legacy system, whose top-down hierarchical control structures tend to be resistant and inimical to what shamanic medicines represent. These two universes share in being fundamentally distributed, robust, private, and by their nature not amenable to capture and control. They often escape. They both teach us to take deep responsibility for our agency rather than handing it off to a third party. Control your set and setting is similar to not your keys, not your coins.” Elyseos is built on the Fantom network. This ecosystem will use a utility token - ELYS which you can buy on ZooDEX. To buy ELYS you will need MetaMask installed with the Fantom Opera network active on it. Supporting links: Elyseos Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points. This week Bitcoin crashed overnight dropping 10% to US$43,000. The dump happened on the same day that El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender and became the first nation-state to buy Bitcoin.  Supporting links: Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Jules Urbach is the CEO of OTOY, a leading cloud graphics company that is pioneering technology to redefine content creation and delivery. The work of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is being cataloged in a new digital archive by OTOY.  Why you should listen: RNDR, whose partners include Amazon, Google, Apple, and HBO, developed a cutting-edge platform based on underlying OTOY technology that allows individuals to create graphics at the same level as Hollywood studios. RNDR is revolutionizing visual effects by using the cloud to democratize GPUs and other rendering resources. It also seeks to provide energy-efficient solutions for creating NFTs.  Jules' best friend from childhood is Rod Roddenberry. Jules is working on a new digital archive of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s legacy. The Roddenberry Archive will feature the flagship Star Trek series, original films, and spinoffs in a variety of formats including digital and holographic renderings, documents, images, models, and blueprints. The archive will capture deep 3D asset metadata from assets, images, blueprints, and models using RNDR, OTOY's blockchain GPU computing network. In order to capture original studio and physical assets at the highest level of photographic fidelity, the archive will leverage OTOY's LightStage Academy-Award-winning facial scanning service, generating the first comprehensive lighting and reflectance data set for future archival use. Iconic artist Mike "Beeple" Winklemann is joining the Roddenberry Archive project as a creative consultant, and, alongside legendary painter and illustrator Alex Ross, will help commemorate the Roddenberry Archive and cross-link it to both the Alex Ross and Beeple RNDR Archives. Supporting links: OTOY Jules on Twitter Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

DFX is an Ethereum-based decentralized exchange protocol with a dynamically tuned bonding curve optimized for fiat-backed stablecoins using real-world FX price feeds. Mainstream adoption of Web 3.0 requires assets that are protected from price volatility. By focusing on fiat-backed stablecoins on the Ethereum blockchain, DFX leverages the existing defi ecosystem to bootstrap humanity's next-generation foreign exchange. Why you should listen: DFX is a decentralized foreign exchange protocol optimized for stablecoins. In building the protocol, DFX will bring liquidity and volume to fiat-backed stablecoins globally. The next generation of global finance cannot rely solely on USD-pegged stablecoins. A decentralized protocol where users can efficiently exchange stablecoins pegged to various foreign currencies is not only important but necessary. DFX has added the NZDs, the New Zealand Dollar Stable Coin to the protocol. NZDs is a New Zealand Dollar (NZD) Stable Coin backed 1:1 with physical New Zealand Dollars in a cash and cash equivalent treasury managed by a New Zealand registered financial services provider. New Zealand’s currency is a leader in adaptability, resilience, and market trustworthiness. NZD is the 10th most traded currency globally. The NZD stable coin will offer cryptocurrency users the stability and utility of the New Zealand Dollar with the versatility of a cryptocurrency. The NZDs is issued by Techemynt. Supporting links: DFX NZD Stablecoin Techemynt Castle Island Stablecoin paper Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Aaron McDonald and Brooke Howard-Smith are co-founders at Non-Fungible Labs, the team behind the FLUF World NFTs. FLUF World is home to 10,000 unique 3D animated rabbits. The FLUF metagame describes the emerging, expanding metaverse treasure hunt that the FLUFs exist in.  Why you should listen: FLUFs have been programmatically generated from 270 attributes across 14 categories to be entirely unique by at least three degrees of separation. This also excludes their expression, dance, scene, and soundtrack. Non-Fungible Labs have an exciting roadmap that will continue to unlock ever-increasing, advanced functionality for FLUFs. The future of the digital world will be expansive and complex. Smart agents are needed to help navigate these always-on spaces. Altered State Machine is a framework to track ownership of AI agents in any digital environment.  Supporting links: FLUF World Altered State Machine Non-Fungible Labs Aaron talks Centrality Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Konstantin is the founder and CEO of Vaulty Finance - a vault that bridges Defi and NFTs on the Binance Smart chain. The Vaulty platform is a yield aggregator that offers multiple strategies to optimize yield farming through regular auto-compounding. Why you should listen: Vaulty is a decentralized platform designed to enable automatic asset allocation across DeFi instruments. Every vault has its own smart contract with predetermined logic. Choose your vault and passively earn yields or NFTs stress-free. Vaults allow users to minimize network fees and time spent researching the best instruments. Vaulty unites the power of DeFi and NFT. Vaulty is a unique profit-sharing yield aggregator that incorporates both traditional DeFi and NFT yield strategies into the same decentralized platform. Konstantin shares some fascinating stories on what it was like to grow up in rural Russia and why so many talented poker and chess players are Russian. Supporting links: Vaulty Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Bill Barhydt is the CEO of Abra, a platform that enables crypto banking services for consumers and institutions in over 100 countries. Abra’s mission is to become a crypto bank that replaces the need for legacy banking services. Bill was a member of the Cryptography Mailing List where Satoshi first released the Bitcoin White Paper. Bill started his career working in cryptography for the CIA.  Why you should listen: Abra is making cryptocurrency investing simple. Abra operates an easy-to-use smartphone-based wallet, exchange, high yield interest accounts, and lending service supporting 125 digital assets. Users can buy, sell, store, and invest in cryptocurrencies and manage their crypto investments, in one app. Their vision is an open, global financial system that is easily accessible to everyone. Bill is a globally recognized technology pioneer with a unique perspective on the early days of the internet and blockchain. Bill started his career working in R&D at the CIA and NASA. Bill was one of the early team members at Netscape where he was involved in building the core infrastructure that helped grow the consumer Internet we use today.  Supporting links: Abra Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points. This week Morgan Stanley’s SEC Filings reveal it has purchased a large holding of Bitcoin via the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. Only Fans has reversed its decision to ban sexually explicit content, and the NFT market continues to boom as a new wave of Generative Art is released.  Supporting links: Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Zach Burks is the CEO and founder of NFT marketplace Mintable. Mintable is the first NFT platform to pioneer ‘gasless minting’, enabling content creators to mint NFTs without prohibitive transaction fees. Zach says he is building Mintable with Mom in mind. If his Mom finds it easy to use Mintable to mint and trade NFTs, then anyone can use Mintable. Zach is applying the best features from e-commerce sites such as Amazon to make Mintable one of the most exciting and feature-rich marketplaces of the future. Why you should listen: Mintable is the first NFT platform to pioneer ‘gasless minting’, enabling content creators to mint NFTs without being burdened by prohibitive transaction fees. When the Mark Cuban-backed platform recently completed its US$13 million Series A funding round, it also announced an upcoming integration with Ripple’s XRP ledger to enable a new breed of ecologically friendly NFTs.  Supporting links: Mintable Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Manu Alzuru is a humanist, a solarpunk, and the founder of DoinGud - a next-gen NFT platform designed to empower creators and collectors to create meaningful impact.  Why you should listen: DoinGud is an NFT ecosystem where passion has the ability to create social impact. NFT creators can donate at least 5% of their profits from every sale to charitable causes benefiting the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. These goals include creating gender equality, ending world hunger, ensuring all individuals have good health and well-being, and quality education for all.  Invited creators can onboard colleagues. Brands and communities can open meta-galleries to house their artists. Anyone can submit their artwork to a pool to be represented by a community gallery. Solarpunk is an art movement that envisions how the future might look if humanity succeeds in solving climate change. The iconography of Solarpunk focuses on renewable energies such as solar and wind power. It is the flipside to Cyberpunk.  Supporting links: DoinGud Solar Power Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Victor David is co-founder and CEO of Epik, a global agency that connects brands with video games to offer unique and immersive digital experiences using NFTs. Why you should listen: Epik is putting brands into video games to offer unique and immersive digital experiences to more than a billion fans worldwide. Epik is solving the problem of building interconnectivity between metaverses so that metaverses will be able to talk to each other in ways never possible before. Called the “Epikverse,” this technology will span across multiple virtual worlds, including, one day, Facebook. Epik’s core mission is to improve the experience of gamers, making them feel the nostalgia of collecting in-game items that are accessible across different games, allowing them to interact with their assets outside of the game, and be able to trade them anytime. The opportunities we see in NFTs are not only limited to arts and music. Most of our NFT collections are based on collaborations with the leading gaming companies, and these unique digital assets will give the players distinctive benefits when playing the game (special offers, skins, accessories, playable characters, etc) giving real-world value in real life. Supporting links: Epik Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points. This week Bitcoin breaks US$46,000 while the U.S. senate has included draconian restrictions on the crypto ecosystem in the infrastructure bill. On the positive side, the last week has seen an awakening of political support for crypto, from all sides. Following the successful implementation of EIP-1559, can Ethereum become ultra sound money? Supporting links: Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Dave the Wave is a pseudonymous investor, trader, and technical analyst. A contrarian, Dave is respected on Crypto Twitter for his objective, rational approach to technical analysis. Dave’s thesis is that Bitcoin is following his Logarithmic Growth Curve model. Logarithmic growth suggests exponential gains at the beginning that slowly taper off towards a plateau in the long term. Why you should listen: Dave the Wave has a gentleman’s agreement with Plan B (stock to flow). If Bitcoin achieves a price above $100K by December this year, the stock-to-flow model will remain valid, and Dave’s Logarithmic Growth Curve will be invalidated. If Bitcoin fails to break $100K by December, then stock-to-flow is invalidated and the Logarithmic Growth Curve remains valid. Dave says that Bitcoin is a nascent currency in the process of capitalization. There are periods of volatility in both directions as new people add and subtract liquidity in adoption waves. Bitcoin is following the path of gold that was capitalized over hundreds if not thousands of years, Bitcoin has already reached a market cap of 1T in just 12 years. Despite sometimes being misunderstood as bearish, Dave says that if Bitcoin follows the Logarithmic Growth Curve, Bitcoin will hit somewhere between $500k and $1million in approx ten years' time.  Supporting links: Dave the Wave  The Logarithmic Growth Curve Dave on Twitter The Bitcoin Liquid Index Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Jamie Burke is the Founder & CEO of Outlier Ventures. Jamie and his team are investors in and authors of The Open Metaverse thesis which explores how the Web 3.0 Stack extends beyond financial services into virtual worlds, gaming and decentralized economies.  Why you should listen: Outlier has created a framework to assess and interrogate Metaverses, and a toolkit to design alternatives based on the principles of user centricity and sovereignty of identity, data and wealth. They call it the Open Metaverse OS, a shared and open operating system built upon the success of decentralized protocols, in particular DeFi and NFTs emerging in The Web 3 Stack. Jamie says it is important to understand that the beginnings of the Metaverse are already here and if we think of it as a far-off destination we will sleepwalk into not addressing some fundamental design choices and replicate what is broken about the Web today. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeny said “The Metaverse is going to be far more pervasive and powerful than anything else. If one central company gains control of this, they will become more powerful than any government, and be a god on Earth.” For this reason, it is crucial that the metaverse is designed on open and permission protocols.  Supporting links: Outlier Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Mark Berisha is the CEO of APEcoin and MemeFarm, and a founding member of the BustaBNB DAO. APECoin embraces the viral nature of memes and builds DAO-based perpetual utility machines. Apecoin is developing BustaBNB for the Binance Smart Chain and they have just launched a new NFT marketplace and NFT-OTC solution.  Why you should listen: APEcoin is an ecosystem for crypto enthusiasts and entrepreneurs who are building DAO-based perpetual utility machines. APEcoin incubates projects which focus on automated Defi solutions. MemeFarm is designed to automate the NFT ecosystem and allow users to mint, auction, buy and sell NFTs on the Binance smart chain. By using the NFT marketplace, users can solve many of the problems that exist in the altcoin OTC trading space. BustaBNB is an online crypto crash game with BNB as the primary play token. Users place a bet, watch the multiplier curve increase exponentially and click before the crash. BustaBNB was influenced by games like Bustabit, and Satoshi Dice. A BUST airdrop will occur for existing APE holders. Supporting links: APEcoin MemeFarm BustaBNB Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Iqbal V Gandham is VP of Payments & Transactions at Ledger. One of the best-known companies in crypto, Ledger has sold more than 3 million hardware devices and secures an estimated 15% of all crypto assets. Ledger is now preparing to make inroads into Web3. Why you should listen: As we move towards a world where all types of assets will be digitized, providing users with the most complete and secure user experience will be more important than ever. Ledger Live is an all-in-one digital asset management application that allows users to exchange, stake, and lend their crypto, interact with dapps and manage NFTs. When combined with Ledger’s hardware, Ledger Live provides best-in-class security for users in the digital asset environment. Iqbal hints that a new Ledger hardware wallet is coming in 2022. Supporting links: Ledger Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points. This week markets are up as Amazon rumors and a short squeeze pump Bitcoin. Plus Elizabeth Warren says shadowy super coders are threatening the financial system, Tether is in the regulatory firing line, and CZ is ready to work with regulators. Supporting links: Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Tom Bilyeu is the CEO of Impact Theory and one of the world’s leading motivational speakers. Tom is committed to pulling people out of the matrix. A successful multi-business entrepreneur, Tom’s goal is to impact culture at scale. He plans to do this by building the next Disney. Impact Theory produces comics, graphic novels, books, television, film, interview talk shows and more. Tom is building an NFT universe that will leverage the unique properties of Manga, Anime, and blockchain to take Impact Theory to the next level. Why you should listen: Impact Theory is a revolutionary studio that produces original content on themes of empowerment, by bringing together some of the most talented creators, writers, and artists. The studio was started by CEO Tom Bilyeu, one of the planet’s most successful entrepreneurs. Impact Theory distributes content across digital platforms including the emerging NFT space. The studio has built a loyal audience in the millions with over one billion social media impressions, and its catalog of content has hundreds of millions of views.  Supporting links: Impact Theory Matthew Ball on the Metaverse Nexo Tom on Twitter Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Tess Rinearson is VP of Engineering at Interchain where she leads the team responsible for Tendermint Core, the leading BFT engine for building blockchains. Why you should listen: Interchain is responsible for stewarding foundational infrastructure for blockchain ecosystems. Their work helps secure billions of dollars in value across a variety of major blockchain projects, including Cosmos. The team is pioneering new protocols for interoperability across the entire blockchain ecosystem. The vision is to create a new interconnected ecosystem, a new internet of blockchains: The Interchain. In 2017 Tess published a popular Bitcoin explainer guide using emojis. Supporting links: Interchain Bitcoin Explained with Emoji Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points. This week markets are down as rising inflation pushes up food costs and the delta variant worsens the pandemic. Plus AXIE keeps mooning, stablecoins are in the regulatory firing line, and is CZ willing to work with regulators?   Supporting links: Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Dean Tribble is the CEO of Agoric, the JavaScript-native smart contract platform with backing from Naval and Polychain Capital. Dean co-designed the negotiation process and contract for the first smart contracting system, AMiX. As a Principal Architect at Microsoft, he co-designed the Midori distributed object-capability operating system. As founder and CTO for Agorics, he architected the brokerage information system for Schwab’s active traders and the WebMart electronic contract system for SunLabs. Dean has a fascinating perspective on the past, present, and future of blockchain. Why you should listen: Dean’s life work can be described as creating software that lets humans cooperate better. He wants to use technology to give humanity leverage to accomplish our goals and create a more cooperative world. A Proof of Stake blockchain and JavaScript-native smart contract platform, Agoric offers developers and enterprises an interoperable ecosystem for deploying and managing DeFi applications. Agoric is a robust architecture for building secure smart contracts based in JavaScript for maximum reach. Agoric empowers developers to execute transactions, establish new markets, and craft novel exchanges — without centralized control. Agoric uses an object-capability (ocap) security architecture, in which access to a programming object itself is the authority to use the object. All kinds of digital assets can be created, but importantly, they can be transferred in exactly the same ways, with exactly the same security properties. Agoric’s composable smart contract development environment provides reusable governance, lending, and trading components to propel the creators of the multi-chain DeFi economy.  Supporting links: Agoric Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points. This week we look at Shapeshift’s announcement that it will decentralize and give FOX tokens away in an airdrop to a million users. Plus what’s behind the AXIE blockchain game boom, and more signs of the emerging Metaverse...  Supporting links: Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Molly Mackinlay is Network Lead at Protocol Labs, an open-source research, development, and deployment laboratory. Protocol Labs projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and more. The team aims to make human existence orders of magnitude better through technology.  Why you should listen: Molly is project lead at IPFS, The InterPlanetary File System, a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol designed to preserve and grow humanity's knowledge by making the web upgradeable, resilient, and more open.  Filecoin is an open-source, public cryptocurrency and digital payment system intended to be a blockchain-based cooperative digital storage and data retrieval method. It is made by Protocol Labs and builds on top of InterPlanetary File System, allowing users to rent unused hard drive space.  Supporting links: Protocol Labs IPFS Filecoin Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

James Gillingham is the Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of FINXFLO, the world's first Regulated Hybrid Liquidity Aggregator. The platform is launching in August but traders can sign up now. Why you should listen: After an injury brought a promising football career to an end, James worked at Close Brothers, and International Asset Management, before founding JageroFX, a startup delivering automated trading algorithms. Having spent his career identifying problems in the financial markets, James then founded FINXFLO to provide solutions for crypto traders. FINXFLO is described as the world's first hybrid DeFi/CeFi liquidity and protocol aggregator. Using only one account with one KYC, users are now able to utilize liquidity from 25+ CeFi and DeFi platforms through a single user interface.  Supporting links: FINXFlow Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Simona Pop is Head of Community at Status, a secure messaging platform that also functions as a crypto wallet and Web3 browser. Status is designed to enable the free flow of information, protect the right to private, secure conversations, and promote the sovereignty of individuals. Why you should listen: Status aims to be a decentralized, secure by design communication tool. The true benefit of Web3 is the ability to transact and communicate on our own terms – without middlemen. In order to enjoy this type of free communication, we must be confident that our messages, transactions, identities, and funds are safe and secure.  Status has been hosting workshops in Latin America to provide educational resources to local creators on how to get involved with NFTs - from minting to collecting - in a variety of native languages. Looking ahead, the team is also examining how crypto-based social applications are a key component of crypto’s evolution. Status believes creating social platforms that uphold crypto’s values of decentralization, privacy, and user rights is the next step.  Simona is an NFT collector and inverse meme aficionado. To find what an inverse meme is, listen to the show! Supporting links: Status Read Simona’s blog story Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points of the last week. June was a huge month with Bitcoin’s antifragility put to the test. Bitcoin’s market cap dropped by 50%, hash rate dropped by 50%, China stepped up its crackdown on mining and exchanges, and everyone from Nassim Taleb to Elizabeth Warren had a crack at Bitcoin. What happens next? Supporting links: Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Benjamin Sauter is a partner at Kobre and Kim, a legal firm that specializes in International Disputes and Investigations. The firm prides itself on its aggressive, trial-ready approach. Ben’s role is to aggressively defend clients in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries against high-stakes government enforcement actions.  Why you should listen: Ben and his colleagues wrote a piece for Brave New Coin called The U.S. govt is aggressively prosecuting crypto cases - how to defend yourself. The article summary reads: Thinking Beyond The Government Playbook - how crypto holders can proactively plan for and respond to aggressive U.S. Government enforcement tactics. Ben says the high level takeaway is that U.S. prosecutors are becoming increasingly aggressive in their attempts to police digital asset markets — and more creative in their ability to follow through. Recent events highlight the ability of prosecutors not only to collect actionable intelligence about digital assets, but also to use that information to achieve law enforcement objectives across international borders. By recognizing these tactics and acting proactively, individuals with digital-asset wealth can reduce the risk of falling afoul of the authorities.  With U.S. prosecutors adopting an aggressive approach towards enforcement against cryptocurrency market players, companies and individuals who are concerned that they may be the target of a government investigation should prepare to mount a creative defense. That means hiring counsel who understands criminal defense and trial strategy, and the technical issues raised by digital asset holdings, including blockchain forensics, and asset forfeiture procedures. Supporting links: Kobre & Kim Ben’s piece on Brave New Coin Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Charlie Silver is the founder and CEO of Permission, a crypto startup that gives individuals a way to monetize their data and get paid in ASK, the crypto asset that powers the Permission ecosystem. Why you should listen: Permission.io has developed the infrastructure for a new engagement model based on permission and value exchange.  The Permission platform runs on ASK, a new currency created to pay users for your engagement. ASK allows users to be compensated for data shared while doing the things users normally do online. ASK is a currency that users can spend on Permission.io and on other sites that accept ASK. The company has created the Permission Coin (“ASK”) to enable individuals to securely grant permission and monetize their personal data across a decentralized eCommerce ecosystem. Advertisers reward consumers with ASK for interacting with brands and content, building loyalty and trust. By transferring value back to consumers along the buying journey, away from big tech’s exploitation of data, Permission is bringing change to the current Internet business model. The company has launched a Google Chrome browser extension that enables members to monetize their data while browsing the web. Supporting links: Permission Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

BTSE is a crypto asset exchange and futures trading platform. BTSE has partnered with Brave New Coin to create two indices - the BBCX and BBAX, around which BTSE has developed futures trading products. BTSE co-founder Brian Wong explains what makes BTSE one of the most compelling crypto trading solution providers.  Why you should listen: BTSE offers a suite of sophisticated futures trading products. BTSE traders can now use index perpetuals to build market-neutral strategies, and target risk profiles. Index perpetuals allow traders the ability to hedge out unwanted exposures, such as the broad crypto market or a particular sector.  BTSE has partnered with Brave New Coin to create several indices. An index is a way to track the value of a broad market or sector, via a single price. The BNC-BTSE Composite Index (BBCX) tracks the real-time market performance of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. The BNC-BTSE Alt Coin Index (BBAX) tracks the real-time market performance of Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin and EOS. Both indices have outperformed their largest constituents in the year to date 2021. Supporting links: BTSE Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points of the last week. And what a week it was - China has stepped up its crackdown on all parts of the crypto ecosystem. As a result, miners are moving out of China, and the Bitcoin hashrate is dropping. The markets are down in response, but ultimately, is this good for the bitcoin network? Supporting links: Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Sebastián Milla is Chief of Special Projects at Exodus, one of the most popular blockchain wallets in the world. Exodus has 1.6 million users and completed a fund-raising round by issuing stock tokens to Exodus users on Algorand.  Why you should listen: The internet is the future of experiences. The Exodus product and design teams are focused on delivering these experiences now. By focusing relentlessly on UI/UX Exodus has grown swiftly, developing a cryptocurrency wallet experience that surprises and delights its users. Supporting links: Exodus Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points of the last week. And what a week it was, Andy looks at El Salvador’s decision to make Bitcoin legal tender, which countries might be next, and is Elon Musk warming back up to Bitcoin?  Supporting links: Nexo Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Oliver Gale is the CEO and co-founder of Panther Protocol, an end-to-end privacy protocol for digital assets, which can be deployed in a compliant way on any public blockchain. After pursuing a hip-hop career in the Caribbean, Oliver entered the world of start-ups and blockchain.   Why you should listen: Panther Protocol is an interoperable privacy solution focused on the needs of decentralized finance traders and investors. Due to the immutable and transparent nature of public blockchains, DeFi users are subject to surveillance and economic espionage. Transactional privacy is in high demand, as it allows retail, whales, and institutional users to protect their competitive advantages by not allowing adversaries to reverse engineer and front-run their strategies. Traders lose their alpha very quickly in DeFi, and Panther’s value proposition is to help traders protect that alpha. Key Takeaway: Panther Protocol is an end-to-end privacy protocol for DeFi. Panther provides DeFi users with fully collateralized privacy-enhancing digital assets, leveraging crypto-economic incentives and zkSNARKs technology. Users are able to mint zero-knowledge zAssets by depositing digital assets from any blockchain into Panther vaults. zAssets will become an ever-expanding asset class for users who want their transactions and strategies the way they should always have been: private. Supporting links: Panther Protocol Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Aaron McDonald is the CEO and co-founder of Centrality, a tech ventures ecosystem building the infrastructure for the emerging decentralized web. Why you should listen: One of Centrality’s mission statements is to UnF**ck the world. To achieve this they are building a suite of decentralized technology solutions that allow the world’s citizens to interact with each other on a more even playing field.  Key Takeaway: The CENNZ blockchain is part of the Centrality ecosystem. It is the world’s first natively permissioned public blockchain. A “permissioned” blockchain provides specific access or privilege for certain participants of the network. So by making the permissioning native, you can be certain that the access control functionality is aligned with all the services. In practical terms, this means CENNZnet is one of the most secure blockchains in the world with higher performance and fewer issues. Supporting links: Centrality Aaron on Twitter Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Johan Unger is the CEO of Meme.com, a memetic asset protocol that acts as a story layer of the internet. Operating at the intersection of memes, NFTs, and social media, the platform describes itself as what would happen if Doge and Wikipedia had a baby. Why you should listen: Meme.com uses crypto and entertainment to measure the value of internet content. It enables people to mint memetic coins, which are priced based on the perceived value of the trend or meme they represent, like a CoinMarketCap for memes. Key Takeaway: Memes are the soul of the internet, a new way to communicate complex ideas, and fun to make, trade and collect. Johan thinks of memes in the way that Richard Dawkins originally described them: that any idea that spreads is a meme. So a song, a YouTube video or a tweet can be memes if they spread. Meme.com is building the meme economy.  Supporting links: Meme.com Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Matthew Graham is the CEO of Beijing-based Sino Global Capital. Matthew is a prominent personality on Crypto Twitter, an authority on China’s ever-shifting attitude to blockchain, and an outspoken critic of Elon Musk and Bitclout. Why you should listen: Sino Global Capital is an investment firm based in China that invests in decentralized technologies that have a strategic connection to the mainland Chinese market. Matthew says the firm is very bullish on DeFi, and the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems. While he comes from a traditional finance background and describes himself as an intense personality and a suit and tie guy, Matthew has embraced crypto’s meme culture.  Key Takeaway: China sees blockchain as a key strategic technology pillar critical to the next decade of growth. China is moving forward with its digital currency initiative and continuing to hold trials across the country. While headlines that say China is banning bitcoin or banning crypto mining can be alarming and market-moving, there is always much more nuance behind the scenes and headlines shouldn’t be taken at face value. Supporting links: Sino Global Capital Matthew on Twitter Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Lin Dai is the CEO and co-founder of OneOf, a green NFT platform for music NFTs, built on Tezos, with backing by Quincy Jones. Why you should listen: OneOf was co-founded by tech entrepreneur Lin Dai, digital media executive Joshua James, and music industry veteran Adam Fell, in partnership with Quincy Jones. Launching in June, the platform will feature exclusive NFT drops from top music artists such as Whitney Houston, Doja Cat, H.E.R., Quincy Jones, John Legend, and TLC. Key Takeaway: Non-fungible token (NFT) platform OneOf raised $63 million in a seed round from prominent tech and music industry veterans. Its mission is to become a more environmentally sustainable marketplace for artists and fans. OneOf is built on the Tezos blockchain. Minting an NFT on OneOf uses an order of magnitude less energy than platforms on the Ethereum Network. Supporting links: OneOf Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Andy Pickering is here with a weekly crypto market update where we look through the volatile world of crypto Twitter to tease out the most important narratives and data points of the last week. We look at Elon Musk and the new Bitcoin Mining Association, the price volatility, and the news out of China - bullish or bearish for Bitcoin? Supporting links: Watch this podcast on YouTube Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Erica Stanford is the founder of the popular Crypto Curry Club in the UK and the author of a new book called Crypto Wars: Faked Deaths, Missing Billions and Industry Disruption. Why you should listen: With time on her hands during lockdown, after listening to the BBC podcast The Missing Crypto Queen about the infamous Onecoin crypto scam, Erica decided to write a book about crypto scams. The book covers everything from Onecoin to Bitconnect, the ICO bubble, and the various exchange exit scams. Supporting links: Crypto Wars on Amazon The Crypto Curry Club Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Colin Pape is the founder of Presearch, a community-powered, decentralized search engine that provides better search results while protecting privacy and rewarding users with crypto when they search. Why you should listen: Colin says the best way to compete with Google is to build a framework that enables people from all over the world to collaborate on an open and decentralized search engine. Presearch is preparing to release its first decentralized technology – a new search engine experience that runs on node servers operated by Presearch community members. The new Presearch Engine offers results that are as good as the world’s top search engines. It also provides an additional layer of data through community packages which makes those results even better. For example, you can search Presearch for “Bitcoin” to see what the crypto package looks like. Over time, there will be additional results provided by a user-curated supplementary index. Key takeaway: Presearch is dedicated to creating significant value for marketers who want to reach Presearch users. Advertisers can stake their PRE to a keyword, and whichever advertiser stakes the most tokens will have its ads displayed when a user searches on the term selected. Advertisers confer the most external value on PRE, so their success is important to the ecosystem. Supporting links: Presearch Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Ben Pousty is the US Marketing Lead for Bitstamp, a crypto exchange with offices in Luxemburg, London and New York. We talk to Ben about Bitstamp’s new "For All The Ways We Crypto" campaign, the challenges of crypto marketing, Bitcoin’s unit bias issue, and more. Supporting links: Bitstamp Bitstamp U.S. expansion Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Last week Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin. He said that Tesla is concerned about the increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining. In response, the crypto markets crashed with Bitcoin falling to $42,000. Let’s look at the subsequent tweets from Elon, reaction from the Bitcoin community, the Doge angle, and speculate on what happens next. Supporting links: Bitcoin is key to an abundant energy future The Investors Guide to Bitcoin and the Environment Is this Elon’s Doge wallet? Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin

Elon Musk tweeted today that Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin. He said that Tesla is concerned about the rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining. In response, the crypto markets crashed with Bitcoin falling 12% to $49,000. In this podcast, Andy reacts to Elon’s tweets and suggests some resources that argue that Bitcoin mining incentivizes a renewable energy future. Supporting links: Bitcoin is key to an abundant energy future Bitcoin Mythology The Investors Guide to Bitcoin and the Environment Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Owl is the cofounder of 0x_nodes, a cross-chain yield aggregation network. 0x_nodes is a network of deployed systems that allow users to move, acquire, and build yield-bearing strategies with non-native assets across EVM and non-EVM-based blockchains. Why you should listen: One of the fundamental problems across the crypto ecosystem is the lack of interoperability between blockchains. The ability to easily move value between blockchains will unlock the next growth cycle in decentralized finance. This is the problem that 0x_nodes seeks to solve. To the non-technical, Web 3.0 feels seamless. Video streaming, global zoom conferences, smartphone apps, gaming, and social media. Everything is integrated and it all just works. Through innovation and fast development cycles, 0x_nodes aims to end the fragmentation of the Ethereum network — and make interoperability commonplace for all. Key takeaway: 0x_nodes is a cross-chain protocol that allows synthetic asset movements between blockchains — enabling broader yield aggregation strategies. Being able to seamlessly move value between blockchains will open up a new world of financial products and services. 0x_nodes will start on the Ethereum mainnet first — deploying nodes throughout the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystem.  Instead of utilizing a spoke network topology, 0x_nodes will be comprised of a core mesh network between EVM ecosystems — and will bridge the EVM network with external blockchain networks. This unidirectional yield aggregation pulling from EVMs to the mainnet will create new opportunities for yield, while simplifying the experience for the user. Supporting links: 0x_nodes Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.