Around The Coin

Justin Rice is the Vice President of Ecosystem at the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, an open-source network that connects the world's financial infrastructure. In this role, he represents developers building on the Stellar network and coordinates members of the Stellar ecosystem, with an ultimate focus on the growth, development, and ongoing health of that system. Prior to his current role, Justin worked in Stellar product development, where he helped build the StellarX exchange, which utilizes Stellar open-source technology. He holds a Bachelors of Arts degree in Comparative Literature from Harvard University.

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Ramani 'Ram' Ramachandran, CEO of Router Protocol, an infrastructure layer enabling communication between blockchains. After graduating from MIT with an MBA from the Sloan School of Management, Ramani worked at Deloitte, Moody’s, and Schlumberger before moving into crypto in 2014. He built and ran Asia’s earliest crypto fund, returning 4x. Built Fordex - the world’s first stablecoin DEX and Qume, an institutional-grade crypto exchange. He also launched Asia’s first crypto-index token before founding Router Protocol which is solving the problem of blockchain interoperability.

In this episode, Mike Townsend, speaks with Adam Hofmann, Founder & CEO of Nimble Decentralized Insurance.Adam is forever a creative, but shifted his professional trajectory away from music and built a 22-year career in the insurance industry playing all the roles - service, sales, marketing, risk advisor, operations, and owner.Adam took his innate creativity, learned practicality and the thrill of building with a big vision, and became the founder of Nimble.Nimble is a decentralized and democratized insurance protocol built on Algorand; the rails for all people to have the opportunity at lower premiums, investment income, and proper protection.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Hugo Philion, Co-founder & CEO of Flare Network. They aim to be the interoperability chain connecting all smart contract chains, non-smart contract chains, & web2 APIs together.As a former commodity derivatives portfolio manager & a Master's in Machine Learning, Hugo is uniquely qualified to speak about the past, present, & future of DeFi - both on a financial fundamentals basis, as well as the tech driving it.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Darius Tabatabai, co-founder of Vertex Protocol, a cross-margined, order book DEX built on Arbitrum. Darius comes from an extensive background in TradFi, including as the former Global Head of Metals Trading at BAML and CS and former Head of Trading at Crosstower and JST Capital. Darius and Vertex co-founder, Alwin Peng, decided to build Vertex as a vertically integrated DEX that could compete with centralized exchanges in both features and performance.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Alan the co-founder and CEO of Enya Labs, a core contributor to Boba Network. With more than 20 years of experience in building and investing in enterprise and fintech startups, he leads the efforts at achieving Boba Network’s goal of bringing Ethereum to the next billion users worldwide.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike Townsend speaks with Jack Vinijtrongjit, Co-Founder and CEO at AAG. They discuss web3, AAG's mission, building a content platform, crypto wallets, NFTs, Japan's embrace of tech, Tokyo's tech adoption, and the importance of feedback and social media presence.

In this episode, Mike Townsend chats with Miles Paschini, CEO of FV Bank, a global digital bank providing fintech and blockchain companies with integrated banking, payments, and digital asset custody services. An investor and serial entrepreneur, Miles has built numerous innovative financial services businesses. He was awarded seven patents related to payment processing services during the development of EWI Holdings, acquired by Blackhawk in 2006. In addition to developing the industry’s first cryptocurrency-linked debit cards implemented worldwide. Miles and FV Bank co-founder Nitin Agarwal are the first in history to be awarded a U.S. patent for the development of stablecoin instruments to be backed by sovereign debt and on-chain KYC.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend, speaks with Zach Resnick, Founder and CEO of Unbounded Capital. He co-founded Unbounded Capital with Dan Rosen in 2018. He is also a founder of poker education and content company Just Hands Poker and of discounted biz/first class flight concierge service FlyFlat. During his early 20s, Zach made a living from playing cash games and investing in other poker players, providing a unique understanding of risk management that is largely shaped through leveraging volatility to outperform others in the high-risk high-reward situations of poker. In 2016 Zach made his first personal investment in Bitcoin and began a disciplined due diligence process for investing in crypto assets. He then began managing founding partner Dan Rosen’s capital and the continued success investing gave them the confidence and capital to start the firm in the SF bay area, officially launching in August of 2018.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Sergej Kunz the Co-Founder of 1inch Network, a distributed network of decentralized protocols that enable the fastest, most lucrative, and protected operations in major blockchain ecosystems. Numbers-wise, they have 2.7M+ wallets, $194B+ in trading volume, and $55B+ in available liquidity.They also recently raised $175M in Series B funding at a $2.25B valuation.Sergej has been in the crypto space for 10+ years. He and his Co-Founder Anton Bukov created the 1inch Network MVP in 18 hours at the ETHNewYork hackathon in 2019.Before founding his company, Sergej worked as a software engineer. His resume includes Mimacom consultancy and Porsche. He also co-hosted the YouTube show CryptoManiacs.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices