Money Reimagined

In this week’s episode, we go to Ireland. “Money Reimagined” co-hosts Sheila Warren and Michael J. Casey are joined by Michael O’Sullivan, the author of “The Levelling,” which describes the post-globalization era, and Lory Kehoe, director, Digital Assets & Blockchain at BNY Mellon and the founder of Blockchain Ireland.This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network.The topic, nominally, is the Biden Administration's proposal to harmonize international tax rates and Ireland’s resistance to that. What does this have to do with crypto? A lot, it turns out. A common concern among regulators of cryptocurrencies is that a lack of international harmony across jurisdictions creates “regulatory arbitrage” for developers of what is a global, borderless 24/7 technology and market. The idea, flagged by Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler in his impactful speech this week, is that if there’s no consistency in rules around the world, crypto businesses will pick and choose where they base their operations and tend toward the most lax regulatory regime. Regulators like Gensler fear this fosters a race to the bottom, opening the door for criminals and the worst actors to find their way in.Makes sense, right? But there’s another side to the story about the policy variance around the world. That is, it allows smaller countries to find opportunities they might not otherwise have to attract international investors and to build their own vibrant domestic economies on the back of that. As we learn from Sullivan and Kehoe, Ireland’s use of competitively low corporate tax rates had a sweeping impact on the Irish economy that went far beyond multinationals setting up headquarters there. It was the spark that generated a vibrant ecosystem of innovation, a holistic growth machine that continues to underpin Ireland’s decades-long economic expansion. With many in Ireland looking to create a crypto-friendly regulatory framework to encourage innovation in digital assets and fintech, that experience poses real questions about how far governments should go toward harmonizing their rules.-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: Lucas Bischoff/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.

You can think of this week’s episode as a nod to what crypto people call the “no coiners,” an effort to listen to the community’s critics and weigh the value of their analysis.This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network, Mimo and Quantstamp.To do so, “Money Reimagined” co-hosts Sheila Warren and Michael J. Casey are joined by Noelle Acheson, head of Market Insights at Genesis. (A trading company, Genesis is owned by CoinDesk parent Digital Currency Group.) The trio take a couple of crypto-critical essays and dissect them.At a time when cryptocurrencies seem to be under attack, especially from government officials, it’s tempting for people in the crypto community to drop into defensive mode, which mostly translates into dismissive mode. Whether it’s criticisms of bitcoin’s energy usage, complaints about illicit activity through crypto, or people pointing out how many outrights scams are run through this technology, the industry’s response is typically to mock the critic for their ignorance or hypocrisy in ways that can sound to outsiders like whataboutism. Sure, sometimes it’s warranted, as with Crypto Twitter’s response to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) claim earlier this week that a crypto-based financial system would be run at the “whims of some shadowy, faceless group of super-coders.” Some memes were acutely on point; many others were just downright hilarious.But often the knee-jerk dismissiveness backfires against the community. It can come across as cult-like, a failure to embrace and learn from criticism and a reluctance to consider the views of others. This is not how you bridge divides and expand adoption. So, in its own humble attempt to take a more reflective stance, “Money Reimagined” takes a look at two noteworthy criticisms of the crypto space. One is a thoughtful essay entitled “I, Token: The untold story of the hole in Bitcoin's heart” from Brett Scott, an essayist who explores the intersection of money and society, often with the bent of an anthropologist. The piece argues that bitcoin enthusiasts fail to imbue the cryptocurrency with true meaning because they focus on the “function” of bitcoin (what it does) and not its structure (what it is). Along the way, he makes some compelling points about the difference between “price” and “value.”The other is a blog post by International Monetary Fund staffers Tobias Adrian and Rhoda Weeks-Brown, in which they argue cryptoassets are not viable for governments to explore as alternatives to state-run currencies.We hope you enjoy listening. -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.-Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.-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.Image credit: Stanislav Gvozd/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.

Stablecoins are suddenly all over the news, with their explosive growth posing all sorts of questions for investors and regulators alike. This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network, Mimo and Quantstamp.To discuss, co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are joined this week by Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Avanti, a Wyoming-based digital assets bank, and George Selgin, director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute.We start with a striking fact: the supply of the top 10 stablecoins pegged one-to-one with the U.S. dollar is up fourfold from the beginning of the year, at $109 billion. That’s more than three times the combined value of PayPal and Venmo’s outstanding customer accounts at the end of last quarter. This spectacular growth is encouraging stablecoin issuers to play it big. Circle, the issuer of the highly successful dollar-pegged token USDC, is going public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Tether, the controversial issuer of USDT, has settled a lawsuit with the New York attorney general’s office and is providing regular updates on its token’s reserve backing. It is also now branching out into other markets, including a euro-backed stablecoin. And Paxos is expanding a digital asset servicing agreement with PayPal that’s sure to bring opportunities for PAX and Binance’s BUSD, the two stablecoins it manages, to play a back-end role in a growing market of consumer crypto transactions. Regulators are getting nervous. Federal Reserve officials are worrying about potential systemic risk from economy-wide exposure to de facto dollar substitutes that may not be sufficiently backed by reserves to stand up the value investors expect them to hold. And anti-money laundering enforcement agents are worried that these tokens will facilitate illicit transactions among criminals. So, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen convening a high-powered meeting of the most important financial regulators this week to discuss the topic, it seemed like an opportune time to dive into the outlook for stablecoins and the evolving regulatory framework.Will regulators strike the right balance by using smart disclosure and management rules to give customers and investors confidence to use stablecoins? Or will they adopt a draconian, restrictive posture that kills off the sector’s huge innovation potential? Long and Selgin are ideally placed to discuss these issues. Both are steeped in crypto knowledge, the structure of the banking system and regulation. Long’s company, Avanti, is issuing its own digital dollar token, the Avit, for which it is seeking support from the Federal Reserve. Selgin, a monetary historian, is finding that his expertise in the United States’ free-banking era of the 19th century is proving especially relevant to the outlook for stablecoins in the 21st century.-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.-Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.-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.-Image credit: Panuwat Sikham/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.

As we mentioned last week, this is part two of our two-part series of “Blockchain meet ESG,” an exploration of the challenges and opportunities that confront the crypto and blockchain communities as investors and businesses increasingly demand compliance with environmental, sustainability and governance objectives. This episode was recorded live Tuesday, May 25 2021 at Consensus 2021.This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network, Mimo and Quantstamp.In this second episode, our guests address subtleties and niches within environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG). Increasingly, blockchain technologies are employed in a variety of forms across the world to combat specific areas within ESG. These range from indigenous resource allocation and tracking to building sustainable supply chains from the ground up and applying big data to consumer water conservation. And that’s just a taste of what’s underway. At the same time, the blockchain back end’s impact on ESG is being refined, with initiatives angling to avoid worst-case scenarios of innovation, accurately quantify bitcoin energy consumption and reinforce incentives for using clean energy sources.This time we’ll hear from a diverse array of fascinating guests: Julius Akinyemi, founder and CEO of UWINCorp, and Lucía Gallardo, founder and CEO of Emerge, discuss blockchain solutions for free and fair trade. The two companies both focus on resource assessment. UWINCorp encodes the data and location of indigenous plants onto the blockchain, while Emerge is building an agricultural resource database.Tanya Stephens, senior innovation leader at Procter & Gamble, addresses ways to track sustainability through supply chains and a consumer-focused water conservation coalition. The “50L Home” initiative believes that if consumers have the right data at the right time, they will be able to reduce their water consumption to only 50 liters a day.Austin Hill, founder of Brudder Adventures and the first CEO of Blockstream, explains the “Vulnerable World Hypothesis,” which investigates how current innovations could be abused or misused in the future. Though “Vulnerable World” predicts a dim future, Hill outlines several strategies to avoid the worst-case scenarios.Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer of Coinshares, and Anton Dek, research associate at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, outline methods for quantifying bitcoin’s energy consumption and interpret recent figures. A trend of co-locating mining facilities and renewable energy plants is placing decentralized, smaller-scale facilities on the grid.Mike Colyer, CEO of Foundry (Foundry is owned by Digital Currency Group, the parent company of CoinDesk), and Jesse Morris, chief commercial officer of the Energy Web Foundation, present the miner’s perspective on the incentives of clean energy sources.-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.-Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.-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.Image credit:  donfiore /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.

With Sheila out on vacation, we’re doing something different on the Money Reimagined podcast this week and next. We’re bringing you remastered versions of two one-hour CoinDesk TV shows we recorded during the Consensus virtual conference in late May.This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network, Mimo and Quantstamp.The theme for this two-part series was “Blockchain meet ESG,” an exploration of the challenges and opportunities that confront the crypto and blockchain communities as investors and businesses increasingly demand compliance with environmental, sustainability and governance objectives. A total of 14 guests over the two days helped us dive into how blockchain technology can help communities collectively address climate change or boost financial inclusion, and how the technology might overcome its own ESG challenges, such as Bitcoin’s carbon footprint and the crypto industry’s relative lack of diversity.These issues have become more urgent for the crypto industry as public attention has grown on the heavy energy usage within Bitcoin’s and other protocols’ proof-of-work mining systems. These were especially aroused by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who walked back the company’s initial intention to accept bitcoin for its cars, citing environmental concerns. As Wall Street banks and asset managers put ever more resources into ESG investment vehicles and as the Biden Administration puts environmental and other concerns at the center of its regulatory agenda, these matters will only become of greater importance to the crypto industry. Industry insiders are trying to flip the debate. With the right deals and policies in place, Bitcoin mining could be used to underwrite the rollout of renewable energy infrastructure, for example. And blockchain technology could help resolve what is arguably the biggest barrier to the effective deployment of ESG mandates: a consistent record-keeping system to accurately measure their impact. The technology could also help align incentives within an economic ecosystem so that all profit-seeking participants are motivated to achieve outcomes that serve the public good. This first episode, recorded on Monday, May 24, tackles the complexities of counting, tracking, and reporting ESG, including climate accounting, sustainable investing, Wall Street’s ESG movement, blockchains for ESG tracking and tokenizing ESG.You’ll hear from the following guests, each in short 5-10 minute segments:Massamba Thioye, co-chair of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Martin Weinstein, founder of Open Earth Foundation, discussed the planet’s carbon accounting needs. They offered a high-level view of the humanity-wide challenge of how to consistently measure our collective ability to meet the Paris Accord’s 2050 targets for carbon neutrality and of how blockchain technology could help. Kevin O'Leary, the Chairman of O'Shares ETF chairman and investor on CNBC’s “Shark Tank” show, explained how increasingly powerful ESG committees are making institutional investors more picky about the assets they funnel money into. He shared some of his ideas on how the Bitcoin community can better adjust to this new reality. Mark McDivitt, CEO of Context Labs and former global head of ESG at State Street, ran with the mantra of “what we can measure we can manage” to argue for sophisticated blockchain-based models involving multiple calibrations and analyses to ensure that environmental data is trustworthy enough for investors.  Cristina Dolan, the CEO of InsideChains, spoke of her work for a forthcoming book about data science and ESG demands, in which she and co-author Diane Barrero Zalles, detail the need for standardization and how this technology might help. Marc Johnson, senior associate at Rocky Mountain Institute, highlighted his organization’s work using a blockchain model for tracking cumulative carbon emissions and reductions at each stage along a supply chain. And Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at Ernst & Young, outlined a vision for how tokenization based on trusted environmental and sustainability data can generate digital assets that economically incentivize both investors and the businesses that issue them to consistently strive for positive ESG outcomes. 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.-Mimo is home of the world’s #1 euro-algorithmically pegged token minted at an interest rate of just 2%. Lock in your crypto assets, access their liquidity, and stabilize your portfolio by hedging against inflating coins. Open a Vault and experience the power of Mimo today at mimo.capital.-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.Image credit: Metomorworks/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.

With all the multiple, differing blockchain and tokens now live on the crypto universe, it’s hard not to worry the industry is recreating the same problems of the original internet. This episode is sponsored by PumaPay.io.This week, co-hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are joined by Denelle Dixon, CEO of Stellar Development Foundation, and Peng Zhong, CEO of Tendermint.Developers will emphasize that their particular blockchain protocol is decentralized and devoid of gatekeeping intermediaries. But how do users move assets across those chains and how can one chain validate the transactions in another? More precisely, how do you do that without once again having to rely on a trusted intermediary to act as a conduit of information or custodian of value? This is eerily reminiscent of the Web 2.0 internet structure that arose at the turn of the century, an economic model that now dominates our lives and falls far short of the early internet founders’ dreams of an open, decentralized system. As Web 2.0 consolidated around large “walled garden” platforms whose corporate owners were the sole gatekeepers to those platforms’ data, we handed immense power to a few key internet companies. How do we avoid making the same mistake again? The answer seems to lie in interoperability protocols and cryptographic tools that essentially stitch blockchains together in a way that users of each can trust information and asset management systems managed by the others, all without a need for trusted custodians. Much is happening in this field. Protocols such as Polkadot, founded by the Berlin-based Parity Labs outfit of early Ethereum developers Gavin Wood and Jutta Steiner, is setting itself the lofty goal of creating the next internet via the aptly named Web3 Foundation. There are blockchains focused on financial interoperability such as Ripple’s Interledger and Stellar. And there’s Cosmos, the blockchain of blockchains developed by Tendermint, which provides a suite of tools for blockchain developers to build cross-chain applications. -750,000,000 PMA tokens are now up for grabs. By depositing today, you will become part of the next evolution of DeFi payments. Go to PumaPay.io.Image credit: NicoElNino/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.

As society moves increasingly online, so do the kinds of risks that businesses face. With cybercrime growing exponentially and businesses liabilities expanding as they accumulate giant honeypots of sensitive user data, this week’s Money Reimagined explores a new approach toward risk, one fueled by a blockchain mindset. An analysis of the state of cybercrime with the explosion in ransomware attacks The new mindset based on principles of openness and decentralization The case for resiliency and cost-based risk tolerance over efficiency and total protection This episode is sponsored by PumaPay.io.Hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren are joined by Dante Disparte, chief strategy officer and head of global policy at Circle whose career was previously centered on radical insurance innovation, and digital pioneer Pindar Wong, chairman of VeriFi, an internet infrastructure consulting firm.A recent report from Cybersecurity Ventures predicted cybercrime costs are on track to total $6 trillion this year. If cybercrime were a country, it would be the third latest economy in the world.How can a blockchain mindset reduce those costs? The Colonial Pipeline attack was a case study in the danger of centralization. The wider distribution of value, data and attack points that’s inherent to decentralized blockchain technology, as well as its collective witness feature and the power of collective, iterative improvement in open-source development hints at more effective strategies for managing such risks. It comes down to a different framing for how to strengthen security. The classical notion of “secured versus not secured” is a prohibitive way of thinking that ignores the grey areas of “at-risk.” Is a healthcare model, with different levels and types of sickness, a more constructive mindset?With governments poised to introduce CBDCs around the world – tempting cybercriminals with the biggest honeypots of them all - a new antifragile risk-management framework is crucial for society as these changes shape the digital future. -750,000,000 PMA tokens are now up for grabs. By depositing today, you will become part of the next evolution of DeFi payments. Go to PumaPay.io.Image credit: Andy /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.

In the early days of blockchain technology, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) seemed like a far-out, unattainable idea. How could an organization, a company or a collective, ever manage itself without anyone in charge? This episode is sponsored by PumaPay.io.Then came the launch of The DAO, an Ethereum-based investment vehicle that subsequently collapsed due to a devastating hack, which in appropriating the acronym gave it a dirty name. It seemed real, functioning DAOs would forever be a pipe dream.Yet, thanks largely to the success of decentralized finance (DeFi), DAOs are now here. They’re real. In this week’s episode, we explore how developers and investors are working through the complex process of bridging the human and legal needs of the outside world with these complex, decentralized systems run by blockchains, automated smart contracts, “multisig” tokenized collateral agreements. We were joined by two great guests, who helped us turn what might be otherwise seen as a nerdy topic into one of huge significance for the future of investing, innovation and economic development: Rune Christensen, chief executive officer of the Maker Foundation, which founded MakerDAO, the first truly successful DeFi DAO on the Ethereum blockchain, which generates the algorithmic stablecoin, dai. Ian Lee, managing director of IDEO Co-Lab Ventures and a co-founder of Syndicate, which enables groups of investors to fund DeFi projects and other ventures using DAOs and DAO-like structures. -750,000,000 PMA tokens are now up for grabs. By depositing today, you will become part of the next evolution of DeFi payments. Go to PumaPay.io.Image credit: Nikontiger/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.

DeFi, as the world of decentralized finance is known, is growing up. This episode is sponsored by PumaPay.io.Venture money is being dedicated to the space, decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity protocols are being upgraded to add flexibility, and so-called layer 2 solutions are being deployed to help scale this vibrant new, ever-evolving decentralized financial system while preserving decentralization. The community has also just successfully gone through a stress test in the form of a sharp decline in crypto prices, which produced none of the systemic risk fallout that some people had hypothesized would arise at such times for DiFi collateral contracts. So, where does this strange new world of finance go from here? In part, that question is about governance and regulation. How will the decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that run the DeFi ecosystem’s various interoperable protocols connect the choices of its human investors with the decentralized, pseudonymity-dependent, on-chain consensus mechanisms on which these smart contracts depend? And what, if anything, should or could external government regulators and internal self-regulators do to protect people if the machines that run it all go bad?For insights into how this fascinating new environment is shaping up, listen in while we chat to Rebecca Rettig, general counsel of Aave, and Marc Boiron, general counsel at decentralized exchange dYdX, about all of the above. -750,000,000 PMA tokens are now up for grabs. By depositing today, you will become part of the next evolution of DeFi payments. Go to PumaPay.io.Image credit: Adam Borkowski/Unsplash modified by CoinDeskSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Central bank digital currencies have evolved from a loosely formed concept to tangible, real-live projects and an array of models have emerged. This episode is sponsored by hellointerpop.io and The Sun Exchange.Michael Casey and Sheila Warren host a live CBDC edition of their “Money Reimagined” podcast at Consensus 2021. In this program, they discuss the further development and future direction of CBDCs with Christian Catalini, the chief economist of the Diem Association, and Benedicte Nolens, head of the Bank of International Settlements’ Innovation Hub in Hong Kong. -InterPop is redefining the future of NFTs and fandom. Learn more at interpop.io. -The Sun Exchange is offering CoinDesk Reports listeners a free solar cell with your first purchase and automatically lease them to power businesses in sunny, emerging markets.Image credit: Lucas Alexander/Unsplash modified by CoinDeskSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.