

Crypto Critics' Corner
Cas Piancey and Bennett Tomlin
Bennett and Cas discuss historical moments in the cryptocurrency and finance industries, focusing on frauds, hacks, exit scams, and other malfeasance.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Dec 23, 2021 • 25min
F*ck the SEC, all my friends hate the SEC
Today Bennett and Cas rant about the ineffectiveness of the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and its mostly failure fraught 87-year history.

Dec 16, 2021 • 17min
The World is a Ponzi Scheme, You just Live in It
Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey talk about the history of Ponzi schemes, the definition of Ponzi schemes, and why they're both pretty tired of hearing everything described as a Ponzi scheme (hint: it's because most things aren't Ponzi schemes).

Dec 9, 2021 • 21min
NFTs, the New Short Killer? No. Definitely Not.
Today Bennett and Cas talk about an idea being passed around that NFTs or non-fungible tokens will ruin shorts and change the market forever.
The reality? No. Definitely not.

Dec 2, 2021 • 21min
The El Salvador Bitcoin - Volcano - Bitcoin City Bond
Today Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey discuss a really interesting and weird idea: the El Salvador Bitcoin Volcano Bonds offered by El Salvador in collaboration with Tether, iFinex, and Blockstream.

Nov 18, 2021 • 23min
Stablecoins will Fork your Chain if they Want to Fork
Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey talk about the concept that maybe stablecoins play an intimate role in how successful a fork of a major cryptocurrency is or whether the cryptocurrency forks at all.

Nov 11, 2021 • 47min
The Tether Papers (feat. David Canellis of Protos)
Today we dissect The Tether Papers along with one of the main authors, David Canellis - also the head of the Protos newsroom.
Please follow along at home by reading The Tether Papers here: https://protos.com/tether-papers-crypto-stablecoin-usdt-investigation-analysis/

Nov 7, 2021 • 24min
The President's Working Group and Algo Stablecoin Woes
In today's episode Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey discuss the President's Working Group, which recently released a report on stablecoins, and the issues that the creator of TerraUSD (an algorithmic stablecoin) is facing.

Oct 30, 2021 • 52min
Tracking Tether and Working on Ethereum Layer 2 (with Daniel Goldman)
Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey are joined by a good friend and special guest Daniel Goldman, an engineer working on the Ethereum layer 2 solution called Arbitrum, but who is also a cryptocurrency critic. Daniel helped create a Twitter bot that allowed skeptics to follow any and all Tether prints for years, and without his work the chore of monitoring every large Tether print during the early days would've been an annoying errand.

Oct 23, 2021 • 40min
Decentralization and Tribalism (featuring Oliver Beige)
Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey talk with Oliver Beige, an engineer turned economist, who tell us whether decentralization is sustainable and how tribalism plays a role.

Oct 16, 2021 • 33min
Taiwan and Tether (with Sam Reynolds)
Today Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey are joined by Blockworks author Sam Reynolds, a Taipei-based reporter, who discusses the early history of Tether in Taiwan and what can be implied by their issues with their early banking partners.