Money Reimagined

This week’s edition of “Money Reimagined” explores the ramifications of a startling shift in the rankings of the world’s top locations for bitcoin mining. The U.S. has leapt into first place and China, the world leader just a few months ago, now has essentially zero mining capacity following a regulatory crackdown there in June. Co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren talk to Justin Podhola, the CEO of Elite Mining, and George Kaloudis, who leads CoinDesk’s Bitcoin-focused research. This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp.The show keys off a report from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) that found that as of the end of August, the U.S accounted for more than 35% of the global Bitcoin hashrate – a measure of the total worldwide computational power used to mine bitcoin – more than double its 16.8% stake at the end of April. Over the same period, the report says, China dropped from 46% of total hashrate to zero.Another point of interest is the rise of alternative centers, – in particular, Kazakhstan, which is now in second place with 18.1% of total hashrate, followed by Russia with 11%.How can an industry with all that equipment and complicated energy needs move so quickly to a new location? What are geopolitical implications of China’s bitcoin mining leadership - once as high as 75% of total hashrate – now being ceded to the U.S., Kazakhstan and Russia? What does this mean for regulation, especially in the U.S., where new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Gary Gensler has been talking a hardline against crypto? Would the presence of a dominant, profitable and strategically important bitcoin industry sway policymakers toward being more or less crypto-friendly?And most importantly, to address a topic that we’ve dived into a number of times on “Money Reimagined”: does this create an opportunity for the U.S. to lead the push for renewable energy-based mining, not only to make Bitcoin greener but to collaborate with energy developers to fund the expansion of a green grid more generally?All that and more is discussed in this wide-ranging discussion. 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.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week’s “Money Reimagined” episode is framed by some bombshell news developments that are adding fuel to a fire of mistrust in authority that’s been allowed to kindle into a raging threat to global financial institutions. This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp.Hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey are joined by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael S. Derby and crypto entrepreneur Maya Zhehavi to discuss two sets of revelations that go to the heart of these problems and what they imply for the crypto industry. One is the Pandora Papers investigation, the results of which were released last week and which the blew the lid off an elaborate global system of obfuscation by which a very long list of rich, powerful political leaders, business people and celebrities have evaded trillions of dollars in taxes and avoided scrutiny of their questionable business activities. The other revolves around some revelations about stock trading activity by Federal Reserve officials, which led to the resignation of the heads of two regional Fed banks and has put Chairman Jerome Powell’s renomination prospects in jeopardy. The show dives into what has happened and what this means for confidence in the financial system and its stewards. How much does it matter that people feel as if the system is designed not for them, but for elites? Will these feed into faith in money itself? And, if so, what comes next? Is it bitcoin? Stablecoins? Central bank digital currencies that compete with each other?Having a seasoned Fed reporter in the mix of guests, the conversation inevitably also dives into the outlook for a digital dollar and what objectives it would serve. 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.

It’s hard to believe it has been a year since Michael Casey and Sheila Warren launched the “Money Reimagined” podcast. This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp And what a year it has been: some rich, probing discussions about the past and future of money, the challenges of regulation and blockchain governance, the battle for financial inclusion, the shifting geopolitical landscape, the anthropology of money and much, much more. All of that while the crypto market soared to a valuation of more than $2 trillion, NFTs went parabolic, the U.S. government got tougher with the sector, China kicked out its bitcoin miners, El Salvador made bitcoin a legal tender, DeFi innovation exploded, and a relentless pandemic continued with no end in sight. To look back on all of that and to help them celebrate this anniversary, Michael and Sheila were joined by a pair who delivered one of the more memorable discussions of the past year: Jill Carlson, the founder of the Open Money Initiative, and Raoul Pal, CEO and founder of Real Vision. With the controversial recent rollout of El Salvador’s Bitcoin project as its backdrop, the discussion updated the somewhat competing perspective that Carlson and Pal had explored in a December 11 episode last year on whether speculation on bitcoin as an asset is compatible with its prospects as a tool for payments and financial inclusion for the poor.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.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Recent comments from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler have reignited the discussion of the future of crypto ETFs in the U.S.This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Insider Protocol. In this week’s episode of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey dive into the world of crypto ETFs and their rocky history with U.S. regulatory bodies. Fred Pye, CEO of 3iQ Corp., joins Warren and Casey to walk through 3iQ’s journey to become the first Canadian investment fund manager to offer a public bitcoin investment fund.An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a vehicle through which an investor can access a diversified portfolio of crypto tokens and coins. Though there are many ETFs covering bonds, stocks, commodities and more available to American investors, the SEC has yet to approve a crypto ETF. The first Bitcoin ETF up for consideration was filed in 2013. Since then, 18 applications have been rejected or delayed.With the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seemingly inching closer to approving a narrowly defined version of a bitcoin ETF, Pye’s insights offer some useful lessons learned from the launch of 3iQ’s Canadian dollar- and U.S. dollar-denominated bitcoin fund. 3iQ now manages over $2.5 billion in assets, offering an indication of the kind of money that might flow into the sector if the giant U.S. institutional market were given the opportunity to invest in bitcoin ETFs.We discuss the work 3iQ did to get regulators comfortable with its price references and the way it structures and manages its funds. There’s something of a square peg-meets-round hole problem with digital assets that trade 24/7, often on unregulated exchanges and with highly volatile moves and social media-driven narratives. But as Pye points out, it’s not the regulators’ job to contain an asset’s volatility. It’s to ensure that what the asset manager is promising is delivered. So, with that in mind, what will a U.S. ETF mean for bitcoin (and later or ether and other digital assets when these are added to the approved U.S. offerings) if and when it is approved? Will people own crypto in their 401 (k)s? Will there be a surge of institutional money into bitcoin? Does it matter that the SEC is leaning toward first approving a bitcoin ETF backed not by the underlying bitcoin but by bitcoin futures? And what does that mean for all the spot bitcoin-backed ETF proposals that have been pending approval for what has, for some, been as long as eight years of waiting?These questions and more, all discussed in this week’s episode of “Money Reimagined.” -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.-The Option X algorithm from Insider Protocol allows not only hedge funds but also ordinary users to earn up to 25% per month using the High Frequency Trade Layering method with our Bitcoin bot. You can swap your crypto instantly with our Atlas Swap. For more information, visit insiderprotocol.com-This episode was produced by Michele Musso, edited by Jonas with announcements by Adam B. Levine.Our theme song is ‘Shepard’. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the second of our “OG edition” episodes, “Money Reimagined” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey sit down with legendary investor, startup mentor, prodigious networker, kite surfer and passionate conservationist Bill Tai. This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Insider Protocol. And as an added bonus, he is joined by Danny Yang, the CEO and cofounder of NFTs-for-charity provider Nfinita, of which Tai is the chairman. According to its website, Nfinita is working to “make giving more sustainable and scalable through NFTs, and to enable any NFT to be charitable.” The episode is timed with the launch of OnChain Monkey, a10,000-part collection of monkey-themed NFTs. Uniquely, the collection was created in a single transaction, dramatically reducing the transaction costs that would have otherwise been incurred by any charity that was looking to issue such NFTs for fundraising purposes. In the episode, Tai and Yang explain how the project is looking to tap into the organizing power of communities of interest to drive the development of environmental and social impact projects. Danny also laid out Nfinita’s thinking in a blog post released shortly before this episode. But to get this part of the story, the episode starts with Bill Tai’s personal journey. It began in bitcoin way back in 2010, famously captured in a tweet in which asked whether anyone else was experimenting with bitcoin, which he described as a “P2P digital currency” with “fascinating potential.”But before that, as Tai recounts, it was his experience with the online game Second Life, founded by his friend Philip Rosedale, that led him to discover bitcoin. Money, he explains, is a force that drives the formation of communities, which is why Second Life took off after it created the Linden dollar.From there it is a decade-long journey to a related idea and Tai’s latest passion: NFTs as a motivator of value to bring like-minded people to form communities around causes they believe in. It is a natural extension of Tai’s work as a conservationist, cultivated particularly in relation to the oceans, where he spends a great deal of his time kite surfing. The conversation also delves into Tai’s enviable investment record, having been an early investor in massive success stories such as Zoom, Canva and BitFury, and his reputation as an uber-networker who has a knack for building relationships across ideas and communities. In a period in which angst and concern loom heavy in many places, it’s a conservation that generates an infectious positivity and a hopeful view of how to solve the world’s many problems. 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.-The Option X algorithm from Insider Protocol allows not only hedge funds but also ordinary users to earn up to 25% per month using the High Frequency Trade Layering method with our Bitcoin bot. You can swap your crypto instantly with our Atlas Swap. For more information, visit insiderprotocol.com-See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The fight that crypto exchange Coinbase took to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week highlighted that the federal government’s approach to regulation is broken. This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Insider Protocol. What can be done to improve the relationship between the crypto community and the powers in Washington, D.C.? Is a more comprehensive legislative approach to regulating the industry viable, one that properly protects consumers but also embraces the positive aspects of blockchain technology to encourage innovation that serves the public good? For this week’s episode, “Money Reimagined” co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren talked to Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) about the crypto industry’s standing in Washington and what needs to be done to foster a more constructive relationship with policymakers. Emmer has become one of the most vocal supporters of the industry in Congress. He is the co-chair, along with Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.), of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus.In this episode Emmer talked about the bipartisan nature of the small but growing community of crypto supporters on Capitol Hill and why the technology encourages people to cross party lines. He also discussed what needs to be done to build on that collaborative base to get meaningful reform, and what’s at stake in terms of U.S. global leadership in technology and finance if it doesn’t happen. -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.-The Option X algorithm from Insider Protocol allows not only hedge funds but also ordinary users to earn up to 25% per month using the High Frequency Trade Layering method with our Bitcoin bot. You can swap your crypto instantly with our Atlas Swap. For more information, visit insiderprotocol.com-See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Cryptocurrencies were once an obscure topic in Washington, something  a lawmaker could comfortably ignore without worrying about the impact on their political prospects. Not anymore.This episode is sponsored by Quantstamp and Insider Protocol.In this week’s episode of Money Reimagined, co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren examine the small but growing political clout that the crypto industry is acquiring. The wealth the industry generates buys influence and drives the creation of products and services that threaten the incumbent interests of the existing political-financial system. They do so with the help of Jarrod Loadholt, a partner within law firm Ice Miller’s Public Affairs Group, who, among other prior roles, has acted as senior counsel to the House Committee on Financial Services and CoinDesk’s own Nikhilesh De, our managing editor for policy and regulation.Loadholt and De walk us through the many regulatory issues coming down the pike for the crypto and digital assets industry. They discuss the fight over the infrastructure bill’s flawed crypto tax-reporting provision and what it means for crypto companies’ compliance obligations, the outlook for ETFs and the need for an international regulatory framework for the industry. They also talk about the possibility of a turf war between the Commodities and Exchange Futures Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose crypto-savvy chairman, Gary Gensler, is signaling an expanded role for the SEC in areas such as decentralized finance (DeFi).The story that emerges is one of the legitimization of the industry as it starts to earn a seat at the table. However, extreme tensions will also continue to generate around this highly disruptive technology as the pace of innovation accelerates and continues to develop products that either skirt the law or occupy an ambiguous space within it.-Quantstamp is the leader of blockchain security, having secured over $100 billion 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.-The Option X algorithm from Insider Protocol allows not only hedge funds but also ordinary users to earn up to 25% per month using the High Frequency Trade Layering method with our Bitcoin bot. You can swap your crypto instantly with our Atlas Swap. For more information, visit insiderprotocol.com.-See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For this special inaugural “OG edition” of “Money Reimagined,” hosts Sheila Warren and Michael Casey sit down with crypto entrepreneur, investor and long-time cypherpunk Austin Hill. This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.This is the first in an ad hoc series in which “crypto OGs,” people who’ve been working in the space for some time and have made significant contributions to it, discuss their origin stories, their experiences and their views of the industry’s future. Austin Hill is the ideal person to kick this off. He is perhaps best known in the crypto community for being the first CEO of Bitcoin development company Blockstream. But his roots in crypto run much deeper than that, back to before even the arrival of Bitcoin, when he founded a company in the 1990s called Zero Knowledge Systems whose mission was to use the tools of cryptography to build business models around services designed to protect people’s privacy online. It was one of the first attempts to align business opportunities with the Cypherpunk ethos of “Don’t Trust. Verify” – a paraphrasing of Ronald Reagan that Hill and fellow Blockstream founder (now CEO) Adam Back coined together. What we get from Hill is a journey. He tells of being influenced early on by the radical ideas of Timothy May and the Cypherpunk movement, which leads, among other projects, to some early, failed dabblings in electronic money. He then describes his discovery a decade later that Bitcoin had solved many of the problems of those first prototypes, which leads to the founding of Blockstream. We learn of why he left that well-funded company amid the stress of the brutal “block size war,” and how he has now found peace doing his own thing even as he turns his focus to the very biggest of challenges, how to save humanity from itself. Keep your eye out for later “OG Edition” episodes in the near future. -Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s crosschain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Blockchain technology has accelerated conversations around decentralization, anonymity, agency and empowerment around the world. On this week’s “Money Reimagined,” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are joined by two experts to discuss digital security and privacy, with a focus on India. This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.Dr. Usha Ramanathan is a lawyer and human rights activist in India. She has worked since 2009 to critique and challenge India’s controversial digital identity program. Marta Belcher serves as general counsel of Protocol Labs, chair of the Filecoin Foundation and special counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Belcher recently testified on crypto before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.Initiatives have been popping up around the globe, claiming to address social issues such as banking the unbanked, humanitarian data within refugee camps and identification programs to increase access to governmental programs. There is a romantic appeal to believing these initiatives are built upon a foundation of good intentions, but the reality is often far more complicated, with motivations like a simple money grab, user data collection, or surveillance coming into the mix. And regardless of intentions, these efforts often result in harmful consequences to the users they are engaging.India’s Aadhaar structure, a biometric, digital and physical identity system, is the world’s largest biometric ID system. It is highly centralized, and the data honeypot it presents has gotten the government of India in trouble more than once. An increasing number of systems, from the mundane like grocery shopping to the official like marriage registrations, require an Aadhaar number.And it’s not a perfect system. Individuals can and have been barred from receiving essentials because of technical snags in the registration process with Aadhaar. The system also brings up serious privacy concerns.While some choose to use blockchain technology for its ability to transact anonymously, others work towards establishing digital self-sovereign identity solutions. Where is the balancing point between anonymity and ease of use? Is the additional space anonymity provides around an individual essential to their rights in markets and society?-Unique One Network is an interoperable Platform for DeFi enabled NFT Marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s crosschain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.-Image credit: anand purohit/iStock/Getty Images Plus, modified by CoindeskSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on “Money Reimagined,” we reflect back on the “Nixon Shock” of Aug. 15, 1971 - 50 years ago this week – when the dollar was removed from its peg to gold and the world of finance was turned upside down.  This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of a number of books on currencies and the international monetary system, joined Michael Casey and Sheila Warren to discuss the legacy of this moment. Also chiming in was CoinDesk’s managing editor of podcasts, Adam B. Levine. When President Richard Nixon made his drastic decision to remove the dollar from its peg to gold, it prompted all other countries to de-peg their currencies from the dollar, thereby ending the Bretton Woods managed exchange rate system that had been in place since 1944. By extension, it kickstarted the era of fiat currencies that we still live in.The world that emerged out of that move – one in which the supply of currencies was now at the discretion of monetary officials – set the tone for the current challenges of the global financial system and the powerful role that central banks now play. This monetary history also provides vital context for the efforts by bitcoin and cryptocurrency advocates to build an alternative to that system. Prasad recognized the disruption that digital currency technology seems poised to bring to the world of money and sees a competition for supremacy emerging. However, he was lukewarm about the utility of bitcoin in that future, in part because he believes the element that most bitcoiners are drawn to – its fixed supply – is more of a bug than a feature. The real risk in the global economy, he says, is a fall in prices, not inflation. To stave off the threat of a self-destructive deflationary spiral, he said, monetary issuers need discretionary power to increase money supplyThat set up a healthy debate with Levine, who argued for the superiority of the Bitcoin protocol’s predictable supply function to generate public “trust” over the discretion of central bankers and who claimed that inflation has been severely understated ever since the Nixon Shock.-Unique One Network is an interoperable platform for DeFi-enabled NFT marketplaces, in a variety of sectors, built on Polkadot Parity Substrate. Unique One Network’s cross-chain NFT hub facilitates transfers between a variety of blockchains and ecosystems, unleashing the power of NFTs with myriad innovative capabilities. Find out more at Unique One Network.-Image credit: Bettmann/CORBIS/Bettmann Archive via Getty, modified by CoinDeskSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.