The DeFi Decoded Podcast

This week, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on Tornado Cash, a popular 'mixer' that allows individuals to do crypto transactions anonymously. Typically, sanctions are placed on individuals and institutions. In this case, the government was sanctioning an open-source software project and a neutral tool used by many. This sets a potentially dangerous precedent, which Alex and Andrew discuss on this week's episode. Plus the guys talk about the better than expected CPI print and the impact on crypto before finally giving an update on the status of the Merge.

On today's episode, Alex and Andrew discuss the latest DeFi exploit - a hack of the Nomad "bridge." But first, what's a bridge? What problem does it solve? Do these exploits prove bridges are unfeasible or are they simply implementation challenges to overcome. DeFi boosters talk about dApps and digital assets as being composable, like interlocking LEGO pieces. But we're not dealing with one uniform form factor - DeFi isn't a box of Lego but a mixed bag of Lego, Duplo, Mechanix, and others. How do we figure out a way to get these pieces to click together? Plus we dig into the Ethereum Merge and do a quick macro update.

Solana (SOL) typified the explosive growth of crypto and blockchain in 2021. A new blockchain protocol with a novel and ingenious design, Solana was able to attract thousands of developers and millions of users to an application ecosystem that started with DeFi but diversified into NFTs, Gamefi and beyond. At its peak, Solana was worth $90 billion USD. And while crypto prices have cooled, the thesis for Web3 remains intact and the future of Web3 on Solana looks bright. On this week's episode, Anatoly explains how Solana's birth in the bear market of 2018-2019 helps explain its success today. He talks about how a relentless focus on developers has set the protocol up for success. He also tells us how despite the dip in prices, developer activity has been higher recently than during the bull market. Finally we talk about how Solana's smart phone might be the key to unlocking a crypto-native app store and bringing hundreds of millions of people into Web3. This episode ended up running 45 minutes and we could have gone much longer. Strongly encourage you to check it out!

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Jake Hannah of SX Network steps in to help SX co-founder Andrew co-host the podcast while Alex is out fishing in Northern Canada. Jake and Andrew cover everything, starting with what the betting markets are saying about the Fed interest rate decision. They also cover the current betting market's view on the probability that Ethereum's highly anticipated "Merge" will actually happen in September. Jake shares what he thinks the best sector of the crypto asset economy will be, how the crypto market will perform over the next 12 months, and how Ethereum's "merge" will affect its tokenomics. Jake and Andrew cover a number of other issues such as whether there's any spillover left from 3AC's collapse, and whether USDC will usurp Tether as the largest stablecoin. Check it out, as you won't want to miss two crypto experts give their takes on the future of crypto.

"It's faster to drive money from Nigeria to Ghana than it is to send a wire transfer because with a wire, the money must first go to New York, and then London before coming back to Africa" says Dickson Nsofor, identifying one of many absurd examples of how the global financial system fails African countries, businesses and individuals. This is the problem and opportunity Dickson identified four years ago when he launched Korapay, a Pan-African payment infrastructure company using APIs for payment collections, disbursements, and conversions for businesses anywhere in Africa. Underneath it all are cryptoasset payment rails like Bitcoin and USDC. For him, blockchain is like electricity, unseen but essential to everything. On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Dickson discuss how blockchain is connecting Africa to the world.

On this week's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew try to put the crypto correction in the context of an increasingly complex and muddled global macro picture. Bitcoin failed its test as an inflation hedge, but will the spectre of global recession push it lower, or can it catch a bid and resume its status as uncorrelated asset in a secular bull market? Plus, they discuss (hopefully for the last time) the enduring fallout from 3 Arrows Capital blowing up. Finally, they talk about the new book The Networked State and its rooting in the cypherpunk classic The Sovereign Individual. Will crypto sweep away old industrial age models for governance and economic coordination and usher in a new era of organizations and even nations? Tune in to find out!

Centralized, custodial, opaque, and laden with risk. This describes some of the crypto lending outfits currently teetering on the brink of insolvency. By contrast, most DeFi protocols, which automatically connect willing market participants peer to peer using smart contracts, have continued to operate smoothly through the crisis, though they have seen their assets (known as total value locked or TVL) and user activity drop quite precipitously. As Andrew and Alex discuss on this week's podcast, DeFi will survive this crisis, but centralized crypto banks and other shadow lenders may not.

On today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex and Andrew discuss the efforts of Sam Bankman Fried, or SBF, who has swooped in to stabilize the industry, ask whether its ok that all these firms fail and ponder the question of what the industry will look like when this rout is over.

In honor of DeFi Decoded joining Tik Tok, we bring you this special Gen-Z titled episode (clearly written by Alex, an old millennial, aka Boomer, hence the cringe). Check us out on Tik Tok at @defidecoded. On this week's episode Alex and Andrew talk about the recent weakness in crypto markets and try to untangle how much of it is caused by the general weakness in financial markets and how much of it is a self-inflicted wound unique to crypto. Specifically, they discuss Celsius, the crypto lending platform, and their decision to gate withdrawals until they've shored up their capital and how that might be affecting investor confidence in the ecosystem. They also talk some bear market predictions, why the best projects get built when nobody is looking and where to find 'value plays' in a down market.

On this week's DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex sit down with Tim Copeland, News Editor at The Block, one of the industry's leading news outlets. In this wide-ranging chat, Tim talks about how his experience reading and synthesizing dense philosophy books helps him do the same for crypto white papers and other esoteric ideas. He also shares his thoughts on the upcoming ETH merge, the growing pre-eminence of staking over proof of work mining, how in a bear market, projects will thrive (or die) based on their treasury management, and why he wants to help people find signal in the crypto noise. Tune in!