Around The Coin

In this episode, Min Kim interviews Aaron K, Head of the listings team at CoinMarketCap, the world's leading cryptocurrency data aggregator. Aaron was employee #16 (out of 30) at CoinMarketCap and had a front-row seat to the events leading up to the acquisition. An ex-central banker, Aaron was a founding employee at the FinTech & Innovation Group at the Monetary Authority of Singapore and spearheaded initiatives that have cemented Singapore's position as a globally renowned FinTech hub. Aaron started his career as a trade diplomat and had stints in AdTech and Venture Capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Matthew Zipkin, Lead Developer for Handshake. Zipkin joined Impervious in 2021 to contribute full-time to Handshake, which is an alternative DNS root zone secured by proof-of-work. Impervious is a team of developers contributing open source core software for Handshake and Bitcoin. The Handshake full node software is a fork of bcoin (an alternative implementation of the Bitcoin protocol written for nodejs) which Zipkin contributed to as an employee of Purse.io from 2018-2020. He provides non-stop technical support to the Handshake developer community and is a maintainer of the Handshake organization on GitHub, where the full node and light client codebases are under constant development.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Hossein Azari, CEO of cmorq. As the Founder and CEO of cmorq, Hossein Azari has set out to level the world’s financial playing field.After his first fintech startup, Clarity Money was acquired by Goldman Sachs, Hossein began his journey to build a data management platform that allows everyday consumers to access blockchain information through an easy to use interface. With experience at Harvard, Google and Goldman Sachs, Azari is at the forefront of data science and computational economics.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Jay Shah, President of Personal Capital, an Empower Company. Jay, as founding executive member and current President of Personal Capital, shaped the pioneering digital wealth management company into what it is today. With more than 20 years of experience scaling businesses with technology and data, he has grown Personal Capital from a Silicon Valley startup to a tech-enabled advisory business managing more than $17 billion in assets. The company now has visibility into over $1 trillion in linked account values on their free, financial tools dashboard where people consolidate and see all of their financial accounts securely in one place.Jay's focus remains on building & running consumer-direct FinTech entities that have redefined the banking, credit and wealth management landscape.  Prior to joining Personal Capital, Jay served as CIO of E-LOAN, Inc., a multi-billion dollar consumer lending platform, where he facilitated the company’s acquisition by Banco Popular and led the build-out of the consumer-direct banking platform. Earlier in his career, he served as CTO and CIO at Myers Internet, a B2B SaaS enterprise platform for mortgage and real estate companies, and as Director of Technology, National Risk Management Services at PwC, where he created a strategic software practice for the firm’s emerging consulting businesses.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Michael Townsend sits down with Billy Libby, CEO and Managing Partner of Upper90. Prior to starting the fund, he was the Head of Quant Execution and Market Making Sales, Goldman Sachs and Managing Director, Knight Capital.Upper90 provides non-dilutive growth capital to innovative companies that can demonstrate predictable future revenue or other forms of collateral. Upper90 typically starts with a $2-$10M credit facility with the ability to scale to $25-$50M+ for Seed to Series B businesses. Launched in June 2018, Upper90 began making founder-friendly credit investments often as a flexible alternative to equity (to protect founding teams and early investors from excessive equity dilution). One-third of their new $195M fund is focused on fintech and they have already invested in Clearbanc, Octane Lending and Fig as well as the first investor in Thrasio.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Aaron Kaplan, the founder and co-CEO of Prometheum, Inc., a NYC based fintech company building a Federal Securities Law compliant, blockchain native, public market infrastructure servicing the entire digital asset lifecycle. Aaron is also of counsel at Gusrae Kaplan Nusbaum, where since 2013 he has focused his practice on the applications of distributed ledger technology in the securities industry.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Min Kim speaks with Chad Liu, Co-Founder of Tidal Finance. Chad is a Wharton MBA grad who has spent his time prior to founding Tidal Finance as an investment associate at AU21 Capital, a leading DeFi fund. Previous to that, Chad served in Business Development and Engineering functions at top Oil & Energy companies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Andreas Fletcher. Andreas is a project manager of the Trustlines Network at Brainbot. He has a background in finance and has been in the Blockchain Space since 2013. After supporting the development of the enterprise blockchain solutions for the biggest stock exchange in Europe, including pilot projects with the German Central bank, he decided to join the more revolutionary space of Ethereum.In 2018, Andreas joined Brainbot, a blockchain development studio. Brainbot is one of the main contributors of the Trustlines Network and on behalf of it, Andreas is leading the project development.The Trustlines Network is a community project that empowers people to create their own money and make digital payments. It aims to provide a complimentary financial alternative to unbanked and underbanked people.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Min Kim interviews Kenny Li, the COO and co-founder of Manta Network. Manta network is the plug-and-play privacy protocol for the entire DeFi stack. Kenny is a serial entrepreneur with a decade of experience in scaling startups. He started mining Bitcoin in 2013, and has worked on crypto projects. He received his MBA from MIT Sloan, and was a teaching assistant for several blockchain courses. We are super excited to have him on our show!Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Kory Hoang, Founder of Stably. Prior to founding Stably, Kory was a Private Equity Data Analyst for PitchBook in Seattle. Kory is also a quant who has consulted for money managers, hedge funds and CTAs on many subjects ranging from VIX derivatives to cryptocurrencies and algorithmic trading.Kory holds a BBA with a double major in Finance and Marketing from the University of Washington – Bothell.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices