The DeFi Decoded Podcast

On Today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew is joined by Kevin Zhang. Kevin is the co-Founder of PayTrie and DFX Finance. PayTrie is one of Canada's largest fiat on-boarding ramps, helping Canadians buy crypto stablecoins with their bank account. DFX Finance is the leading decentralized foreign exchange protocol that is optimized for stablecoins. DFX is the category leader in the rapidly emerging DeFi FX sub-sector, garnering over $15m in assets to the protocol and attracting millions of dollars in trading volume. In this episode, Andrew and Kevin do a deep-dive into both PayTrie and DFX and how they are complementary to each other. They discuss emerging trends in stablecoins, looking into market flows and where investor demand is. Finally, we get Kevin's views on where DeFi is today, and how he views the space evolving over time.

On Today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex are joined by Jon Lister, co-Founder and President of Satstreet, one of Canada's fastest growing digital asset brokerages. Jon has executed over $500 million in digital currency trades for institutions and high net worth clients. He previously co-founded BlockEQ, a leading platform for the Stellar Network, which was acquired by Coinsquare for $12 million in December 2018. Jon also gained experience at BMO Capital Markets, Blackhawk Network and earned an HBA from Ivey Business School. On this episode, Andrew and Alex get Jon's outlook on the macro-environment and what it means for cryptoassets and defi. They also discuss some DeFi trends he's watching, and learn more about how SatStreet works and how it's helping broaden access to DeFi opportunities for institutional investors. They discuss which projects are being picked up by the market, and point out some exciting ones that are flying under the radar. They also get Jon's take on the recent regulatory news out of both China and the US and what it means for crypto and defi.

On this epside of DeFi Decoded, in light of the Facebook outage, Alex and Andrew dig into the promise and peril of Web3 - Can it actually solve these problems, or does it threaten to create a system that's just as fragile but more fragmented and thus harder to control. For ten perilous (or blissful, depending on who you ask) hours on Monday October 4th, Facebook and all the Facebook branded apps went offline, exposing the centralized and surprisingly fragile nature of the Web. Despite the broadly positive innovations of the internet, we still rely on middlemen to perform many essential functions, such as maintaining internet infrastructure, moving, and storing value and data, verifying identities, and performing basic business logic like databasing, contracting and so forth. This is problematic for several reasons. Intermediaries are vulnerable to hacking or failure (as we saw with Facebook). Banks, social media companies and other intermediaries are gatekeepers that exclude many people. They also capture all the data and much of the value created online. That's bad because it could violate our privacy but also because we don't get to fully participate in what we create online. Blockchain promises a new era of the internet, dubbed Web3, which could solve many of these problems by giving us a way to move and store assets digitally and peer to peer. Blockchain gives us the tools, incentives and mechanisms to create value and organize capability though DAOs or decentralized autonomous organizations, rather than centralized companies. Web3 promises a fairer, more resilient, more transparent, more private, and more decentralized internet, financial services industry, and economy.

On Today's episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex are joined by our first special guest, Charlie Morris, Managing Partner of CMCC Global, a US $300 million asset management company focused exclusively on digital assets and blockchain technology. Charlie is also an independent board member of Prophecy Defi (PDFI-CSE). CMCC Global was founded in 2016, making Charlie one of the longest tenured VC investors in this entire industry. CMCC research on DeFi and other emerging areas of blockchain innovation are required reading for anyone trying to understand the future of this industry. With offices in Asia and North America, CMCC has a truly global footprint. On this episode, Andrew and Alex ask about Charlie's main crypto theses, and discuss some of the emerging DeFi trends he is keeping an eye out for. They dig into what makes a good project- from the core team to the tech to the target market. And get Charlie's take on some emerging protocols or L1s that are starting to chip away at Ethereum's market share. We also get Charlie's take on the recent news that China is cracking down on crypto and what that means for the industry.

On today's episode we review the key transformations and ask what's next? As Robert Leshner co-founder of Compound Labs says, DeFi is not going to be called DeFi in the next 5 years. It's just going to be called finance. And all finance is going to run on blockchains; most assets will make their way onto a blockchain." Financial services is more than an industry—it is the cardiovascular system of the global economy, the lifeline of all other industries. DeFi is reimagining its anatomy and physiology from banking and trading to risk management and more. Through the first few weeks of DeFi decoded, we have covered all the key functions of the financial service industry and how it's being disrupted. They are: Storing value: DAO treasuries for institutions, cryptoasset/token wallets for individuals. These are the new crypto-native bank accounts Moving value: Stablecoins such as USDC and MakerDAO's DAI route around banks Lending value: Pooled lending such as Compound and AAVE augment savings accounts at banks and other financial intermediaries and have better yields to boot. Funding and investing: Investment aggregators such as YFI and Rari could ultimately disintermediate investment advisors, mutual funds, exchange traded funds, and robo-advisors. Exchanging value: Decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap, Sushiswap, and QuickSwap could replace or enhance stock exchanges and centralized cryptoasset exchanges Insuring value and managing risk (i.e., derivatives): On-chain insurance such as NexusMutual and derivatives platforms such as SX, Perpetual protocol, and dYdX could supplement or replace insurance policies and over-the-counter derivatives. Analyzing value: Contract auditors such as Zeppelin and DeFi Score could augment or perhaps even perform the work of the Big Five accounting firms. Accounting for value: Block explorers such as Etherscan and PolygonScan track asset movements in real time; perhaps eventually eliminating periodic audits by accounting firms. Authenticating identity: Formal verification is no longer required to access open-source DeFi protocols. Pseudonymous or anonymous identities are common.

DAOs are increasingly governing larger and larger DeFi protocols and their respective treasuries. On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dig into the rapidly emerging DAO boom and discuss how they've helped accelerate DeFi ecosystem growth. While Decentralized Finance has the potential to revolutionize the financial system, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) threaten to disrupt the very way humans organize, socialize, and coordinate. DAOs are on-chain entities that facilitate the governance and economic coordination of decentralized protocols. The typical DeFi protocol often collects a fee, which is then diverted to an on-chain treasury. Rather than having the core founders control this treasury, DAOs enable DeFi protocols to put tokens in control of them. Token holders vote on how to disburse funds, allocate budgets, and how to hire/fire contributors.

On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dig into the rapidly emerging DeFi Index fund movement and discuss how they're different from traditional ETF providers. Many of the largest asset managers in the traditional financial world are passive ETFs and Index funds; the decentralized financial system is no different! Smart contract-based index funds have been one of the fastest growing areas within the DeFi ecosystem. Like traditional ETFs, they create value for investors by packaging multiple different crypto assets into a basket or index, enabling investors to get passive exposure to an entire sector with one click of a button. They come with a twist though; these index funds are entirely blockchain-based and rather than having a centralized asset manager in charge, there is simply an open-source software protocol and decentralized governance system.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes may be back in stock at Starbucks, portending fall's arrival, but it's still very much NFT SUMMER in crypto land. August smashed all records for transaction value in this new breed of digital assets. There are no signs things are slowing down in September. OpenSea, a leading NFT platform, tallied volumes of more than $1 billion in a month, more than eBay's sales volume in the same period. Crypto art connoisseurs (or are they just speculators?) are now routinely spending thousands and sometimes millions of dollars on the rights to own the rights to certain rare images. The dam has broken and NFT culture is flooding into the mainstream. Tom Brady has an NFT platform called Autograph, and Steph Curry has changed his twitter avatar to an NFT he owns in his crypto wallet, and paid $180,000 for to boot. So what exactly are NFTs and why have they captured the zeitgeist? What does their stunning rise tell us about the viral power of crypto. Art is a big market- $67.4 billion in 2018- and growing, but that pales in comparison to the financial services industry, the prize DeFi is targeting. NFT's have taken the art world by storm. Even Damien Hirst is jumping on the band wagon. Will Wall Street be turned on its head when DeFi has its own "NFT Summer" moment? How do NFTs intersect with DeFi - art is an investible asset class and thanks to fractionalization, anyone can own a slice of an NFT or invest in an NFT fund. Could this democratize access to art as an investible asset class? Is this all positive, or is the speculative mania of NFTs going to cause a hangover across the asset class if (and perhaps inevitably when) the music stops? On this episode of DeFi decoded, Andrew and Alex pull out their provervbial easel and palette to paint a clearer picture of just what the heck is going on. Tune in!

Yield aggregators play a key role in the DeFi ecosystem by hooking into many different DeFi protocols for users in order to optimize yield. Yield aggregators work by having users stake tokens into their platform and allowing the platform to manage their assets for them. You can think of them as almost a robo advisor for DeFi. These yield platforms have grown tremendously alongside the growth in DeFi, with over $20b in total value locked. On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dig into the yield aggregator boom and discuss how they've helped accelerate DeFi ecosystem growth.

Insurance and risk management is a $6 trillion market worldwide, but so far is underrepresented in the DeFi space. Decentralized insurance platforms and prediction markets enable the trading of so-called 'event risk' between participants. These platforms upend the traditional model by allowing anyone to transact with each other through smart contracts, with no intermediaries, like insurance companies (for traditional insurance) or investment banks (for derivatives) sitting in the middle. We have seen DeFi protocols like Uniswap and Aave tackle and disrupt markets like trading and lending. Will decentralized insurance see the same kind of growth? What impact will these emerging decentralized models for insurance have on legacy institutions and business models? On this episode of DeFi Decoded, Andrew and Alex dig into the insurance and prediction market space and discuss how these platforms have the power to transform risk management. They compare the decentralized DeFi insurance platforms like NexusMutual and SX Protocol to their established centralized peers.