The Scoop

In this episode of The Scoop, Frank Chaparro and former Deutsche Bank payment analyst Ryan Todd delve into Coinbase's financial performance for the fourth quarter.Todd, a former payments analyst at Deutsche Bank, offers an in-depth analysis of why Wall Street regularly underestimates Coinbase's earnings. He sheds light on the structural factors leading to consistent earnings outperformance, not only by Coinbase but also by major tech companies overall.

Colosseum is an online platform that runs hackathons, accelerates founders, and invests in breakout startups on Solana.In this episode, Colosseum co-founders Matty Taylor and Clay Robbins discuss how they are establishing Colosseum as an entry point into crypto, and their personal journeys in building Colosseum.According to Robbins, maintaining a supportive culture around developer activity is vital for any crypto ecosystem's success:"The lifeblood of growth in the ecosystem is a function of the independent developer ecosystem's health. And so we want to make sure that's our primary remit and service that we're providing. And candidly, that's what we want the Colosseum brand associated with first and foremost."

Matthew Hougan is the Chief Investment Officer for Bitwise — one of several asset managers to recently launch a spot Bitcoin ETF.In this episode, Hougan shares his inside perspective on how market participants are reacting to the new spot Bitcoin ETFs, and why he believes we're not yet at the "sweet spot of demand" for the new products.OUTLINE00:00 Introduction05:46 Crypto & Wall Street09:55 BTC ETF Launch Analysis13:26 ETF Provider Competition19:51 ETF Trading Mechanics23:55 RIA BTC Sales Pitch28:18 Portfolio Construction30:15 Looking Forward32:32 Exotic Crypto ETFs

Dr. Friederike Ernst, co-founder of Gnosis and Gnosis Pay, discusses how Gnosis Pay plans to bridge the gap between on-chain and off-chain payments. They share how the upcoming Gnosis Card will allow users to spend their crypto at over 80 million VISA merchants worldwide. Dr. Ernst believes that in 5 to 10 years, most financial rails will be run on blockchain technology due to its efficiency. They also explore the challenges of merging onchain and off-chain payments and suggest solutions like account destruction and abstracting infrastructure costs from users.

Chris Dixon, managing partner at a16z and founder of a16z crypto, discusses his new book on how blockchains can create a more equitable internet. Topics include the evolution of the internet, the potential of blockchain networks and tokens, incentives in industries like ride sharing, and an overview of his book and its goals.

Jelena Djuric and Sam Hart, Cosmos veterans, discuss recent advancements in the Cosmos ecosystem and Noble's partnership with Hashnote to bring the USYC token, the first cross chain real-world asset (RWA), to Cosmos. They also explore the evolution of the Cosmos ecosystem, onboarding newcomers, interest from non-crypto entities, adding real world assets, and integrations and bridges in the Cosmos ecosystem.

Scott Fletcher co-founded Intersection Growth Partners — one of the crypto industry's leading executive search firms.In this episode, Fletcher overviews how the crypto job market has changed since the market bottom in 2022 and explains what it takes to land an executive position at a top crypto company.According to Fletcher, CEO hires have more than doubled as a percentage of overall executive hires since the collapse of FTX, the number of new executive hires amongst centralized exchanges has more than halved, and the number of executives hired by infrastructure companies has nearly tripled.

Dan Tapiero, founder and managing partner of 10T Holdings and 1RoundTable Partners, discusses the impact of the recent market rally on deal flow in the secondary market. He remains bullish on the industry's future growth trajectory and plans to raise a new fund. The chapter explores equity pricing, valuations, IPOs, and the global focus of the crypto space. Tapiero shares a bullish thesis on Ethereum and discusses the potential of a $10 trillion opportunity in the crypto industry. The episode also explores the involvement of capital allocators in the crypto space and managing risk and volatility.

George Calle, VP of Research at The Block, discusses key topics from The Block's 2024 Digital Assets Outlook report including blockchain scaling, DeFi usage trends, the macro impact of 2023, the regulatory landscape, and potential winners and losers in the digital assets market.

Tzvi Wiesel is the founder and CEO of Baxus, a startup in the wine and spirits industry attempting to revolutionize the way these products are traded, authenticated and valued globally.In this episode, Wiesel explains how his company leverages blockchain technology for ownership proof, authentication and secure storage — and how Baxus aims to address challenges like opaque pricing and legal complexities in the alcoholic beverage market.