On The Brink with Castle Island

Larry White, economics professor at George Mason University and senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, joins the show to discuss free banking, the history of dollarization, and the prospects for a crypto-native banking system. In this episode: - Why CBDCs might not be a good idea - The legacy of dollarization in Ecuador - How the Scottish free banking system worked - What would have to change for free banking to re-emerge today - The prospects for Bitcoin banks issuing notes – and one problem with the idea - The prospects for restoring a cash-like standard of privacy and autonomy in a digital context - The prospects for crypto-dollarization

Matt and Nic from Castle Island Ventures review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week's topics include: - Deals of the Week - Dislocations in the gold markets - The effects of the -16% difficulty adjustments in BTC - Thoughts on the stimulus package - Quarantine reading suggestions and much more news of the week

Jurrien Timmer, the Director of Global Macro at Fidelity Investments, joins the podcast. In this episode we discuss: - Jurrien's career trajectory and how he became the Director of Global Macro at Fidelity - His views on the current crisis in the context of other dislocations he has seen in his 25+ year career - Perspectives on the unprecedented interventions that we are seeing from the Federal government - The outlook for Gold, Bitcoin and other store of value assets - A best and worst case scenario for a recovery. Follow Jurrien: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurrien-timmer-fidelity/ - https://twitter.com/TimmerFidelity

David Vorick, the founder of Nebulous and the blockchain Sia, joins the show to discuss Sia and its latest layer 2, Skynet. We also cover David's experience as an ASIC manufacturer, and what he learned about blockchain security models and the merits of ASICs versus GPUs. In this episode: How Sia is different from other decentralized storage platforms Different models for financing protocol development The story behind Nebulous' settlement with the SEC How Skynet represents the completion of the original vision for Sia David's experience manufacturing ASICs for Sia and Decred – and his clash with Bitmain David's proposal to launch new blockchains with 'protectionist' mining in place

Open Money Initiative founder Alejandro Machado joins the show to explain how Bitcoin is actually used in Venezuela, and how the country is dollarizing in real time. In this episode: How a power cut has been linked to a recent dollarization movement in Venezuela, and how dollar usage became decriminalized Whether dollarization has improved the prospects of everyday Venezuelans Why Maduro is actually in favor of partial dollarization How bitcoin allows you to import a system of credible property rights Why bitcoin still has a relatively low level of penetration in Venezuela Why stablecoins have not made a dent in Venezuela so far

Patrick South, VP of Development at the Chamber of Digital Commerce joins the show. In this episode we discuss: The mission of the Chamber of Digital Commerce and the policy initiatives that the organization is advocating for The line of demarcation between security and non-security tokens and a possible path forward for a safe harbor provision The potential impact of the travel rule and FATF guidelines Patrick's quarantine book and show recommendations

Matt and Nic from Castle Island Ventures review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week's topics include: - Market Commentary - Deals of the Week - Attestiv, Coase and other news - Quarantine Tips and much more news of the week

Nicos Vekiarides, the cofounder and CEO of Attestiv joins the show. Attestiv is a company that builds software to prove the authenticity of photos and videos using public blockchains to timestamp these records. In this podcast we discuss: - The benefits of public blockchains as public notary systems - Use cases for deep fake detection in the insurance industry - Tooling and user experience building on public blockchains Learn more about Attestiv at www.attestiv.com

Douglas Jackson, the founder of E-gold, arguably the first widely-used electronic medium of exchange, appears on the show. In this episode we discuss: - Douglas' motivations for starting E-gold - His disagreements with his cypherpunk contemporaries - Why private monetary issuers might be more responsible than public ones - The challenge of creating an open payments system which is also compliant - His critiques of stablecoins and native-unit cryptocurrencies

Matt and Nic from Castle Island Ventures review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week's topics include: - Market Turmoil - Market Infrastructure - Deals and much more news of the week