Money Reimagined

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin. For the last day for 2021 and the end of a two-week break for Money Reimagined, we’re serving up the second of two of our favorite episodes from the past year. Michael Casey’s pick was the episode from Sept. 15, not because that’s his birthday and not only because in that one he had the pleasure of meeting co-host Sheila Warren’s “chithi” (aunt), Dr. Usha Ramanathan. It was mainly because Ramanahan’s insights and those of the second guest, Marta Belcher, zeroed in on why maintaining data privacy is a matter of protecting our very humanity. Ramanathan is a lawyer and an influential human rights activist in India. She has worked since 2009 to challenge India’s controversial digital identity program, Aadhaar, the world’s largest biometric ID system. Belcher serves as general counsel of Protocol Labs, chair of the Filecoin Foundation and special counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.Aadhaar has long been a lightning rod for the kind of privacy advocates who are often drawn to crypto and warn of the authoritarian threats from a government controlling such a large, centralized database of personal information. To that critique, the tech firms that built and now support India’s system have typically responded that they are overcoming the so-called “digital divide,” providing powerful, “programmable” IDs to the poor so that they can not only access the kind of services we take for granted but build new services on top of them. Ramanathan turns that counter-argument on its head. She suggests backers of Aadhaar and other universal identity systems have fostered a myth that official IDs are necessary for citizens to participate in the economy when it’s perfectly possible to conceive of an effective economic system in which people prosper without compromising their privacy. Belcher then puts all this into the context of how our private data is being captured by centralized corporate internet platforms and whether or not decentralized solutions using cryptocurrencies and blockchains can free us from this. It’s a great episode and well worth a lesson as we head into a new year in which the battle of the future of our digital economy is poised to intensify. This episode was produced, edited and announced by Michele Musso. Our Holiday theme songs are from Joshua Spacht.-Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.-Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.-KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin. This week and next we’re taking a year-end holiday from new episodes of “Money Reimagined.” Instead, we’re serving up a couple of our favorites from this year. This week’s pick was Sheila Warren’s: the Haiti episode from May 21. That’s when Sheila and co-host Michael Casey were joined by Jerry Tardieu, a Haitian author, entrepreneur and politician who represents Petion-ville in the Chamber of Deputies, and by Daniele Jean-Pierre, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Zimbali networks, which delivers smart-ledger solutions for the decentralized economy.The pair walked us through Haiti’s history to show how a shameful, century-long legacy of a slavery-era debt continues to be a burden for the country. The debt, imposed by France to punish Haiti’s citizens for freeing themselves from their slave masters in a rebellion that won their independence in 1804, later became a U.S.-owned asset serviced by a bank that would become Citibank. In that sense, this long-standing problem is directly related to the issue of Wall Street’s power and dominance in the age of dollar hegemony, a power that is challenged, in theory, by cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.The discussion then turns to what solutions, technological or otherwise, might exist to create a system that empowers people rather than leaves them dependent on charity and foreign aid, with all the strings that come attached to that. It’s the kind of episode that reminds us why the ideas behind crypto and blockchain matter. This episode was produced, edited and announced by Michele Musso. Our Holiday theme song is "Father Christmas" by Cody Martin.-Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.-Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.-KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Matt Homer, who is the former executive deputy superintendent for research and innovation at the New York Department of Financial Services. The two walk through the expected crypto integrations coming to their cities and the anticipated challenges that come with introducing this new technology at the municipal level.MiamiCoin is the first coin of its type, where a city is granted yield from the mining of their coin. Close on Miami’s heels is New York City, with its newly elected and crypto-friendly Mayor Eric Adams and the new NYCCoin. Both New York’s NYCCoin and MiamiCoin are issued by CityCoins, whose tokens operate with smart contracts on Stacks, a protocol built on Bitcoin.Though these city coins present an exciting opportunity for cities to tap new sources of revenue and to experiment with engaging their communities in new technologies, they also come with potential challenges ranging from volatility to accessibility. How do Miami and New York and Homer intend to mitigate these risks?This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”-Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.-Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.-KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.On this week’s “Money Reimagined” podcast, Michael Casey and Sheila Warren discuss with CoinDesk’s managing editor of global policy and regulation, Nikhilesh De, his recent review of another cryptocurrency-themed hearing on Capitol Hill by the House Financial Services Committee.“Today's hearing is part of this committee’s ongoing [effort]” to understand crypto and the issues around it.’ Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the committee chairwoman, stated as she kicked off the hearing.Financial inclusion appeared to be a big selling point from the industry representatives, but were the congressmen and women buying it? And yet even though the tone was comparatively more positive then before, regulation seemed to still remain a major issue. For more information and an examination of the intersection of cryptocurrency and government, read Nik De’s Newsletter ‘State of Crypto’. This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”-Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.-Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.-KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp, Nexo.io and KuCoin.This week’s “Money Reimagined” podcast comes to you from Miami, where the annual Art Basel event spawned an explosion of sub-conferences and parties associated with non-fungible tokens (NFT). There, we ran into Pierina Merino, the founder of FlickPlay, an exciting new app that combines real-world, camera-captured imagery with digital artifacts so that users can create and place geo-located NFT collectibles. It’s best described as a merging of Pokémon GO with TikTok and NFTs.  Co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren sat down with Merino to discuss her vision for this project. What emerges is a fascinating discussion around how we human beings project our own “storylines” and how content-generation technology is allowing the merging of the digital with the physical realm. Merino’s background as Venezuelan-born, U.S.-trained architect (as in a physical building architect, not a software engineer) is part of what makes this conversation so interesting. She speaks to how that sensibility with the limits of physical space shapes people’s creativity and their self expression for how they live in the world. What does this all have to do with money? A lot more than you’d think. With NFTs now in the mix, this combination of identity, user-generated content and hybrid physical-digital content constitutes a new form of value creation and transactions. This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard."-Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.-Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.-KuCoin was listed on Forbes Advisor’s “The Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2021,” which highlighted hundreds of tradable coins, low fees, plus automated and margin trading. Sign up NOW to claim a $500 welcome bonus at KuCoin.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With the advent of cryptocurrency and related technologies, and with the failure of the existing banking-centric monetary architecture to address inequities and avoid financial crises, the one thing people tend to agree on is that our system of money needs an overhaul, specifically an upgrade to meet the needs of the digital economy. This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.But what form should it take? And who gets to decide?This week, “Money Reimagined” co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren talk to two guests who’ve thought as much about these issues as anyone.Brett King is the author of six books and the founder of payment app Moven. Via his “Breaking Banks” podcast, he has been talking about the disruption of money since well before the crypto boom. Patrick Murck, a research affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, is probably the very first lawyer to ever take an interest in bitcoin. That led him to help found the Bitcoin Foundation in 2012. More recently, Murck has moved somewhat away from bitcoin. As president and chief legal officer at stealthy startup Transparent Financial Systems, he is seeking to take our existing system of money and transform it into a digital, community-based framework that’s open, programmable, interoperable and privacy-preserving.The launching pad for the discussion was King’s latest book, co-written with Dr. Richard Petty, which carries the provocative title of “The Rise of Technosocialism.” Does new money technology allow us to get away from some of the core tenets of contemporary capitalism to provide things like Universal Basic Income? Or, do we run the risk of undermining the notion of private property and ownership, feeding some of the more radical, decentralizing principles of the crypto movement?From there, the conversation goes to the heart of what matters to society, and the big questions of how we optimize for them. It rounds out with a look at money itself. What is the role for the state in money? What is the role for communities to apply their own values to monetary systems?This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”-Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.-Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.-See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Why was the Philippines uniquely primed for the rapid and widespread adoption of Axie Infinity and other crypto opportunities?This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are Maoi Arroyo, serial entrepreneur and founder of Ignite Impact Fund, the first fund focused on eradicating income and access poverty in the Philippines, and Leah Callon-Butler, director of Emfarsis and screenwriter of the recent “Play to Earn” documentary. Maoi and Callon-Butler bring a depth of understanding of the economic, political and social context of the Philippines and the recent Axie Infinity phenomenon that swept the nation.The island nation is heavily dependent on its Overseas Filipino Workers, whose U.S.-based workers sent a combined $12 billion dollars in cash remittances back in 2020 alone. The country also faces extensive corruption dating back to the Spanish colonial administration. The low trust of Filipinos in the national economy have pushed them to innovate new ways to interact with money.Over the summer, the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity exploded in popularity, with a significant portion of its user base hailing from the Philippines. Many Filipinos recognized the opportunities abound within the play to earn economy, and more broadly with digital payment solutions and blockchain technology. What will this ambitious, mobile-native population adopt next?This episode was produced by Michele Musso and Adam B. Levine, with editing by Jonas. This episode was announced by Adam B. Levine with additional support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”-Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.-Nexo is a powerful, all-in-one crypto platform where you can securely store your assets. Invest, borrow, exchange and earn up to 12% APR on Bitcoin and 20+ other top coins. Insured for $375M and audited in real-time by Armanino, Nexo is rated excellent on Trustpilot. Get started today at nexo.io.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

New York City was all about NFTs this week as the third edition of NFT.NYC, New York’s non-fungible token conference, took place. It went off with a bang!This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Nexo.io.The event has come far from its humble origins in 2019 and this year’s featured 600 speakers across three days and six venues throughout the city. Over the course of the event, 15 different NFT-themed billboards were featured in Times Square. In this episode of “Money Reimagined” Sheila Warren and Michael Casey figure out what to make of the overwhelming display of innovation, creativity and speculative fervor that was unleashed with this event. To do so, they tapped the insightful mind of Sam Ewen, the head of CoinDesk Studios, who explains what this week’s conference represents and how the greater phenomenon of NFTs is sweeping through society.The discussion explored the driving factors behind the energy that was on display, and it says about the current NFT zeitgeist. The event, which attracted 5,500 registered attendees and many more who turned up for the sideline parties and entertainment, has exploded in size since its last showing in February 2020. Back then, the event was in just one theater housing a modest gathering of early NFT enthusiasts. This year, there were more than 600 speakers appearing in concurrent programming across six venues. Just as important was the massive amount of promotion underway. There were hundreds of exhibitors with products using NFTs for everything from music rights to wine collecting. Meanwhile, many NFT platforms, flush with cash from this year’s investment boom, put on raging parties with A-list DJs and bands and spectacular digital art installations. To Ewen, what stood out was the passion of the various NFT communities. He described it as “evangelism,” a force that is helping to grow this space at as rapid a clip as the money that early investors are making. But he also highlighted the hurdles, including the challenge of “gas fees,” the high transaction costs users incur for trading NFTs, especially on the Ethereum blockchain. Either way, the conclusion from the discussion is that something big is happening in this sector, something could transform the digital economy as we know it. It’s just that with things moving so fast, it’s very difficult to predict what exactly that change will look like.  This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”-Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.-Nexo.io lets you borrow against your crypto at 6.9% APR, earn up to 12% on your idle assets, and exchange instantly between 100+ market pairs with the tap of a button. Get started at nexo.io.-See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Christopher Giancarlo is the former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and founding principal of the Digital Dollar Foundation, a group that supports the U.S. adopting a digital currency. This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp.Giancarlo has written a book and he came on our “Money Reimagined” podcast recently to talk about it. The book is called “Crypto Dad,” which is a nod to the affectionate nickname that members of the crypto community started giving Chris when, as head of the CFTC, he made some regulatory moves that were seen as constructive to the industry, such as the approval of bitcoin futures, which was a contentious move at the time. The book is packed with inside-the-Beltway insights into the sausage-making behind regulation. It’s also a great primer for understanding the challenges that the U.S. faces as the technology around money goes through a dramatic transformation. And it makes a very strong case for the federal government to act proactively to support crypto technology in a way that preserves core U.S. values.It’s timely because right now the regulatory conversation around crypto is front and center. Just last week, the first bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund was launched after the Securities and Exchange Commission gave it the green light after years of resistance to launching a bitcoin ETF that holds physical bitcoin. Ironically, the ETF version the SEC approved is focused on bitcoin futures, a product Giancarlo’s CFTC set in motion. But if that sounds like the SEC is now seen as a friendlier force by the crypto community, think again. Many view with concern the rather harsh tone the current SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, has taken with the industry. There’s a lot at stake here. Not just for investors but for geopolitics, too.This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is “Shepard.”-Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We think it’s fitting that this, the 50th episode of “Money Reimagined,” is being published inside an historic week for the crypto community, when the launch of a futures-focused bitcoin exchange-traded fund helped drive the leading cryptocurrency to a new all-time-high just shy of $67,000.This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp.It’s also fitting that at this moment in time – one that is truly looking like a “crypto moment,” defined not only by soaring bitcoin prices but also explosive interest in non-fungible tokens (NFT) and decentralized finance (DeFi) – the “Money Reimagined” guest this week is someone who’s been involved in the crypto journey for almost a decade.Joining Michael Casey and Sheila Warren for this special “OG edition” is Balaji Srinivasan, a serial entrepreneur, investor and influential essayist. Srinivasan is a former CTO of Coinbase, a former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and the founder of 21.co, earn.com and a variety of other startups. His eclectic interests range from genetics – in which he led research at Stanford – to finance, to political history, to the future of journalism. Last year, Srinivasan was recognized as one of CoinDesk’s “Most Influential,” as much as for his prescient warnings about COVID-19 and for mobilizing the crypto community to respond to it as for his insights into the direction of the blockchain technology. More recently, he has become a somewhat controversial critic of media organizations and an advocate for new, decentralized models of truth. That latter topic is where this week’s conversation ended up. What began as a discussion about Srinivasan’s early interests in bitcoin and how it saw it playing into his view of technological disruption as history’s main driver of economic and social transformation moved into an even deeper consideration of the nature of “truth” and who gets to define it. Have a listen as Srinivasan breaks down his arguments for why the future lies in trusting distributed “cryptographic truth” rather than the values of centralized news organizations. This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine. Our theme song is Shepard.   -Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over 100 billion USD worth of digital assets. Visit quantstamp.com to learn why top DeFi projects like Maker, Compound and BarnBridge trust Quantstamp to secure the financial infrastructure of tomorrow. Learn more at quantstamp.com/blog.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.