Around The Coin

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Justin Banon, co-founder and CEO of Boson Protocol, the decentralized network on which the future of commerce will run. Boson Protocol enables anyone to sell physical products in the metaverse as NFTs within the Decentraland space Boson Portal. He previously blitzscaled the Priority Pass Group to a $1Bn per annum revenue global rewards platform. With an academic background in physics, digital innovation and crypto, Justin applies first principles thinking to solve human problems with technology. By combining cool tech with deep tech, he imagines a future where commerce is open, fair, and equitable.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Matt Cutler, CEO and Co-Founder of Blocknative, the leading real-time infrastructure for monitoring pre-chain data, optimizing gas spend, and predicting transaction settlement. Matt has founded multiple technology startups, including Web analytics pioneer NetGenesis, which went public in 2000 at the height of the Web 1.0 boom. His most recent startup, the mobile collaboration platform Collaborate.com, was acquired by Cisco in 2013. Along the way, Matt has consistently made meaningful contributions to emerging technology ecosystems, including serving as chair of the first-ever Webmasters Guild, co-authoring the award-winning E-Metrics Whitepaper, championing AdWeek’s Viral Video Awards, establishing Cisco’s global Design Thinking initiative, and more.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Jack McDonald the CEO of PolySign, Inc., and Standard Custody and Trust, a qualified custodian for digital assets licensed by the state of New York. Prior to joining PolySign, Jack McDonald was CEO of Conifer Financial Services for a decade. Jack was named one of the ‘20 Rising Stars of Hedge Funds’ by Institutional Investor Magazine and inducted into Global Custodian's 'Legends of The Industry’.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Julian Liniger who is the co-founder and CEO of Relai, Europe's easiest Bitcoin App and one of the fastest growing Bitcoin Startups in Europe. Julian is a young serial entrepreneur in the fintech and crypto space based in Switzerland. He is into Bitcoin and Crypto since 2015 and has raised more than $5M in Venture Capital so far, before even turning 30 years old.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Justin Newton, CEO of Netki. Justin Newton is an early internet pioneer and a startup veteran - a serial entrepreneur, thought leader, and innovator with a reputation for driving companies to unicorn valuations while exemplifying the ideals that defined the internet revolution - free speech, anonymity, decentralized ownership, open infrastructure, and permissionless innovation. As a tech executive, Justin led four consecutive companies to $1B+ IPOs. In 1998, Justin helped take AboveNet, a leading Internet Infrastructure company, public, followed by NetZero, the world’s largest free ISP, in 1999. Justin was then EVP of IT for Demand Media, now Leaf Group, where he prepared their technology platforms and IT infrastructure for the stress tests and audits required in advance of their public filings. Additionally, Justin applied all of this technical expertise to the financial services industry as CTO of Blackline systems, developing software that was instrumental in ensuring financial stability in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis.Since co-founding Netki in 2014, Justin has brought his incredible experience in tech to the blockchain world. Netki has pioneered new digital ID validation solutions for onboarding, KYC/AML, and Travel Rule compliance for a variety of blockchain platforms, helping wallet providers, exchanges, banks, fintech, governments, and any company using blockchain technology comply with Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen) guidance while maintaining the principles of privacy and autonomy upon which blockchain and digital assets were founded. Netki has been a highly sought-after participant in government-led initiatives on digital identity by the US Treasury, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Central Bank of Aruba, the government of El Salvador, and other global agencies and institutions.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Chris Swenor, CEO of Reach. Chris Swenor managed technical teams across the globe for over 15 years before leading the blockchain development platform to a $48 million valuation in May of 2021. With multiple exits under his belt, Swenor serves as mentor at Harvard Business School, TechStars, and MassChallenge. Reach has amassed over 6,000 developers as of March, 2022, with many exciting new developments underway.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Michael Bentley, co-founder and CEO of Euler, a non-custodial lending protocol built on Ethereum that allows users to lend and borrow almost any crypto asset. Deployed on mainnet last year, Euler offers a new approach to lending and borrowing markets due to its tiered risk management framework. Prior to founding Euler, Michael was a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Oxford, where he studied evolutionary game theory and dynamical systems.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Thijs Maas, Founder and CEO of Onramper. Thijs went from studying law to teaching to helping blockchain start-ups to founding his own startup. With Onramper, he provides wallets, exchanges and web3 parties with easy access to fiat on-ramps. He's on a mission to make access to crypto as easy as possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Fred Thiel, Chairman and CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings. Prior to serving as Marathon’s chief executive officer, Thiel co-founded and served as chairman of Sprocket, a blockchain and cryptocurrency technology and financial services company whose mission is to reduce the risk and friction of cryptocurrency trading across marketplaces, regions, and exchanges by establishing a federation of exchanges that together create a single aggregated global trading marketplace with large scale liquidity, rapid execution, minimal counter-party risk, and price transparency. Prior to that, Thiel served as chairman and chief executive officer of Local Corporation, an $80 million Nasdaq-listed leader in online local search and digital media, mobile search monetization, and programmatic retargeting markets with over 240 million unique annual visitors. During his career while holding the title of CEO across multiple companies, Thiel successfully created in excess of $750 million in shareholder value, efficiently raised more than $150 million through both public (IPO and secondary offerings) and private capital sources, led multiple successful corporate transformations resulting in highly accretive exits, built high output agile product development organizations, and established corporate innovation groups resulting in the creation of new product businesses that generated significant new revenues in their first year.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with David McDonough, the founder and CEO of CommonStock, a social investment platform designed to amplify the knowledge of the best investors, thereby improving the world’s overall financial health. He became interested in investing after graduating during the 2008 financial crisis when he started an investment club. David fell in love with investing and realized its power when it is social, accessible, and fun. A self-taught coder and web designer, David joined Google as an engineer. While at Google, he started coding a side project to discuss trades, share knowledge, and invest with friends, the groundwork for CommonStock. When the site exploded in popularity, he left Google to build CommonStock full time.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices