On The Brink with Castle Island Mitchell Nicholson (DACS Conduit) on leaving central banking for Bitcoin (EP.135)
Oct 7, 2020
01:11:58
Mitchell Nicholson is the founder of DACS Conduit and formerly an economist at the Bank of Canada. Mitchell's views are his own and not those of the Bank of Canada. In this episode:
- His path to joining the Bank of Canada
- Why he chose to start his career in central banking
- Mitchell's work on the Band of Canada Bitcoin awareness surveys
- Why the Bank of Canada put resources to the Bitcoin awareness surveys
- Mitchell's masters thesis on Bitcoin
- How covering Bitcoin was part of Mitchell's mandate at the Bank of Canada
- Their reaction to Quadriga
- How Crypto Twitter helped was useful to Mitchell during his time at the bank
- What it's like being a Bitcoin enthusiast working at a central bank
- Crypto penetration among Bank staff
- How Mitchell applied lessons from traditional finance to his analysis of Bitcoin
- Mitchell's thoughts on the legitimacy of Tether
- Comparing the risk profiles of single and multi collateral Dai
- Lessons that Bitcoiners can take from central banking
- Whether central banks should be concerned about crypto-dollarization
- The prospects for CBDCs
- Why the public sector may not be able to create a true digital cash with strong privacy assurances
- What a more restricted digital form of central bank money might look like
- Mitchell's view of the true killer app of the crypto industry
- Mitchell's new project now that he has left the BoC
- The one big gap Mitchell has identified in the crypto industry
- The likely effect of the rise of crypto markets on central banking
Content mentioned in this episode:
- The Bank of Canada's 2018 Bitcoin Omnibus Survey: Awareness and Usage
- Chainalysis' 2020 Global Crypto Adoption Report