The DeFi Decoded Podcast

Bitcoin and other cryptoassets like Ether are proving their worth as frictionless peer-to-peer money and playing a key role in funding the Ukrainian war effort with over $100 million USD in crypto donations raised. Alex and Andrew cut through the fog and talk the truth about what's happening.

In this episode, Andrew and Alex sit down with Ben Lee, CEO and co-founder of Blowfish Studios. Blowfish is a games developer and publisher that has successfully launched a myriad of games across standard gaming consoles. Now, Blowfish Studios is now taking the leap forward in the blockchain through its soon-to-be-released Phantom Galaxies. Phantom Galaxies, likely the first playable AAA blockchain game, is expected to shake up the industry by integrating NFTs, P2E and other blockchain concepts into an immersive, fun and engaging game for all kinds of gamers. The game is expected to be released in Q2 2022 with the developers releasing Starfighter NFT drops and generative avatars in Q1 2022. The studio distributed NFTs in the form of an airdrop to its early adopters and will host a public sale of in-game planets also known as "PGToken". With a strong history of delivering high caliber games ambitions to revolutionize blockchain gaming, Blowfish and Phantom Galaxies should be on all gamers' radars.

The crypto bull market is back on as investors weigh the long-term implications of the Ukrainian conflict. On this episode, Charlie shares his perspective on current events and how they illustrate the value of censorship resistant money. What makes Charlie really bullish long-term, though, are Developers, Developers, Developers! Charlie recently attended ETH Denver, a giant global con-fab of crypto programmers, entrepreneurs and influencers. Over 12,000 people attended the event, representing all the major cryptoasset ecosystems such as Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche and more. Charlie describes how the event was brimming with talent, new ideas and concepts. One example from the episode: At one point while queuing for a COVID test, he met two young entrepeneurs who were there with their dad and who have 100k twitter followers and a new DAO! Lots of great morsels from this one. Check it out!

On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex break down these major news events and discuss the long term implications for Bitcoin, DeFi and the broader cryptoasset market.

On this episode, Andrew and Alex ask Dean what problems Agoric solves, how it seeks to onboard millions of developers, where it's seeing the most developer growth, how the tokenomics of its native BND token work, what the roadmap looks like for 2022 and beyond…and much more! Pour a cup of java (sorry, dad joke)…you're in for a quite a ride!

On this week's DeFi Decoded, Andrew Young is joined by Hart Lambur, the co-founder of UMA, a decentralized financial contracts platform built to enable Universal Market Access. Hart studied computer science before working as an interest rate trader at Goldman Sachs through the financial crisis. In 2013 he co-founded Openfolio, a personal finance tracking platform that was acquired in 2017 by a financial planning firm. He now leads a team of financial contract and oracle design researchers at UMA. Andrew and Hart discuss the founding origins of UMA and its mission, looking at both the core UMA protocol and UMA's so-called optimistic oracle design. They also dive deep into the DeFi ecosystem, getting Hart's predictions on what the next big DeFi narratives will be in 2022. They analyze and discuss the ongoing L1 wars and share their thoughts on how the application and blockchain space will develop in the future.

Wall Street's biggest institutions seem to love investing in crypto companies. The week we recorded, FTX, the centralized exchange, closed a $400 million financing led by Temasek, Paradigm, Softbank Vision Fund 2, and including Wall Street names like Tiger Global and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. At $32 billion, FTX is worth more than NASDAQ or Credit Suisse. Yet, these investors and big banks have been slower to embrace DeFi, despite it being a $250 billion market. Why? How will DeFi create financial products on-chain that will appeal to traditional financial players? What regulatory and technology hurdles must be overcome? What's a "permissioned pool and how does it work?" Does it matter that Wall Street embrace DeFi? After all isn't DeFi eating Wall Street? These are just some of the questions we pose to our guest Lex Sokolin, Global Fintech Co-Head and Chief Economist at ConsenSys. ConsenSys' mission is threefold: populate Ethereum with things that work; act as a distribution channel for institutions; and help people use Web3. MetaMask, the most popular ETH wallet in the world, is a ConsenSys creation. Previously, Lex has held various senior roles in both traditional finance, fintech and crypto. He earned a JD/MBA from Columbia University and a B.A. in Economics and Law from Amherst College. His writing is publicly available at https://lex.substack.com.

On this week's DeFi Decoded episode, Andrew and Alex sit down with seasoned trader, cryptoasset expert and the host of the popular "The Wolf Of All Streets Podcast" Scott Melker. Scott explains on the podcast how "fortunes are made in bear markets." Buckle up, this is a good one!

On this DeFi Decoded episode, Andrew and Alex sit down with Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra, one of the leading wealth management platforms for cryptoassets. Abra's mission is to create a simple and honest platform to help the next billion crypto holders maximize the potential of their crypto assets.