Esteban Castaño, the cofounder and CEO of TRM Labs, joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

• The founding story of TRM Labs and the methodical approach the team took to finding product market fit
• Esteban’s perspectives on the NFT landscape and the growth potential in this category
• How regulators and public sector clients are approaching blockchain forensics
• How TRM is engaging with crypto native businesses and traditional financial services firms
• Perspectives on building a remote first organization while maintaining a strong culture

To learn more about TRM Labs visit www.trmlabs.com

Sponsor notes 

• This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit  withum.com/crypto.

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Nic and Matt are back for more deals and news. In this episode:

• Our podcast SNAFU
• Can you wear a suit with sneakers
• How to offset your Bitcoin emissions (without buying offsets)
• Soc Gen asks Maker for a loan
• Bloomberg’s Tether bombshell
• Are stablecoins like money market funds?

Sponsor notes: 

• This show supported by Coinbase Prime, an integrated solution that provides advanced multi-venue trading, custody, and prime services for institutions. For more information see coinbase.com/prime
• This show also supported by OurCrowd. Join the fastest growing venture capital investment community at OurCrowd.com/OTB

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Matt and Nic return for another week. In this episode: 

• Is fasting lindy?
• Ripple’s 250m NFT fund
• Kraken reaches a $1.25m settlement with the CFTC
• Could Ripple win their case against the SEC?
• Wyoming gives a tax break to flare gas miners
• Coinbase adds direct deposits to their platform
• Should stablecoins be issued by banks?
• China is tapped out of their Bitcoin FUD
• Compound suffers an exploit
• Bitcoin miners look at nuclear

Sponsor notes: 

• This show supported by Coinbase Prime, an integrated solution that provides advanced multi-venue trading, custody, and prime services for institutions. For more information see coinbase.com/prime

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Christian Dittmeier, cofounder and CEO of Evaluate Market joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

• How Christian and his cofounders Alex and Cody came to find themselves spending their free time analyzing NFTs
• The insight that led them to start Evaluate Market, a platform for discovering, search for, and evaluating NFTs
• Christian’s perspective on the emerging taxonomy of NFTs and how Evaluate prioritizes the assets that it lists
• The projects and categories of NFTs that Christian is most excited about

To learn more about Evaluate visit evaluate.market

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Nic and Matt return for another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• Latest on the infrastructure bill
• The latest on the platinum coin
• Zany things that financial regulators said this week
• Gensler continues to misrepresent the free banking era
• How bad was the wildcat banking era really?
• Why are financial regulators so interested in free banking?
• The SEC and CFTC are nearing the end of their fiscal year
• The prospects for ‘pipe to crypto’
• Why miners are participating in ‘demand response’ programs
• Matt’s 20-year-old cereal
• Twitter adds lightning tips and NFT authentication
• Binance is under CFTC investigation
• Biden’s new OCC nominee is anti-bank, anti-crypto
• FASB takes comment on GAAP treatment of digital assets

Content mentioned: 

• George Selgin on antebellum Free Banking

Sponsor notes: 

• This show supported by Coinbase Prime, an integrated solution that provides advanced multi-venue trading, custody, and prime services for institutions. For more information see coinbase.com/prime
• This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit  withum.com/crypto.

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Matt and Nic return to recap a tumultuous week. In this episode: 

• Matt’s ongoing war against the turkeys
• Fidelity thinks the SEC should approve a spot ETF
• The Futures based Bitcoin ETFs are nearing approval
• The SEC stonewalling an ETF is a political choice
• The OpenSea insider scandal
• Elizabeth Warren’s critiques of the industry get more and more specific and niche
• Do we event want to know which tokens are securities according to the SEC?
• Ripple is asking the SEC to compare them to Ethereum
• Solana goes down for 17h
• Our interaction with a blockchain fraudster
• The NYT doesn’t understand cryptography
• Are Bitcoiners cosplayers?
• The Epic games v Apple case has implications for the crypto industry

Content mentioned: 

• Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin ETF presentation to the SEC on Sep. 8

Sponsor notes

• This show supported by Coinbase Prime, an integrated solution that provides advanced multi-venue trading, custody, and prime services for institutions. For more information see coinbase.com/prime

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Matt and Nic are back for another week. In this episode: 

• El Salvador’s bitcoin launch
• Was the Chivo rollout really that bad?
• Bukele buys the dip
• Did El Salvador’s bitcoin day cause a 20% selloff?
• McDonalds supports lightning in El Salvador
• SEC v Coinbase
• Introducing the Reves test
• Takeaways from the Miami Bitmain conference
• What is the NFL planning with NFTs?
• Oil majors are getting into bitcoin mining
• Is flare gas the future?

Sponsor notes

• This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit  withum.com/crypto.
• This show supported by Coinbase Prime, an integrated solution that provides advanced multi-venue trading, custody, and prime services for institutions. For more information see coinbase.com/prime

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Nic and Matt are back for another week. 

• Patriots choose Mac Jones
• Kanye releases Donda
• Two year anniversary of OTB
• The fate of the OTB lost episode
• Matt’s peculiar NFT acquisition strategy
• What the hell is Loot
• Punks weren’t the first NFTs
• Square is making a Bitcoin DEX
• The SEC sues Bitconnect

Sponsor notes 

• This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit  withum.com/crypto.

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We welcome Alex Svanevik, CEO of Nansen.ai to On the Brink to provide color on Nansen’s unique approach to on-chain data and analysis. We discuss:

• The evolution of Nansen from a wallet labelling tool to an end-to-end analytics platform

• How Nansen provides actionable insights from its analysis of individual addresses, transactions, and contracts

• Nansen’s process to scale the collection of individual wallet level data over time

• Specific ways end-users are leveraging Nansen to make data-driven NFT investments

• And more broadly, the application of AI to the analysis of blockchain data

You can learn more about the company and its offerings at Nansen.ai and the company’s YouTube channel.

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Nic and Matt are back for news and deals. In this episode: 

• Our current sentiment on the Senate infrastructure bill
• The controversial Flipside/Uniswap portfolio
• MIT’s 2014 Bitcoin airdrop
• Chainalysis’ new data on Bitcoin adoption shows that it’s a developing markets phenomenon
• Is there a conflict between good stablecoins and a competitive market for stablecoins?
• Are lossmaking stablecoins anti-competitive?
• Gensler makes more noise about DeFi
• The problem with futures-based ETFs

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• Bitmex’s new Proof of Reserve/Liability
• Nic in Bitcoin Magazine, The Bitcoin Energy Debate is a Modern Reprise of the Gold Resource Cost Debate
• Chainalysis, The 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index
• David Marcus on Medium, Good Stablecoins

Sponsor notes 

• This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit  withum.com/crypto.

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Matt and Nic return for another week. In this episode: 

• Nic sells an NFT to Von Miller 
• OnlyFans and financial inclusion
• Visa buys a cryptopunk
• Do stablecoins have a future outside of the banking sector? 
• The history of Choke Point and what it means today
• Our merch supply chain issues 
• Tungsten talk

Content mentioned 

• Iain Murray’s OTB appearance on Choke Point
• Nic in Coindesk, OnlyFans Shows How the Banking System Is Politicized

Sponsor notes 

• This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit  withum.com/crypto.

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Nic and Matt return for more deals and news of the week. In this episode: 

• Where we stand on the Senate infrastructure bill
• Is Bitcoin a bipartisan issue?
• What the prospects for the House to change the language in the infrastructure bill?
• The crypto lobby shows its teeth
• Why is Bitcoin rallying in the presence of this bill?
• What is Gensler cooking up for the crypto industry?
• The Economist publishes a pair of critical articles on Bitcoin
• Should stablecoins be regulated like banks
• What’s Tether’s leverage ratio?
• Is there a political Bitcoin bloc being formed?

Sponsor notes:

• This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit  withum.com/crypto.
• Eventus, the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Its award-winning trade surveillance platform is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. Find them at onthebrink.link/eventus

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Nic and Matt return for another week. In this episode:

• Gensler makes a landmark speech
• Gensler asks for a futures-based ETF
• Will the crypto taxation in the infrastructure bill be sufficient to pay for the new spending?
• What explains the 11th hour language in the infra bill?
• When does the Bitcoin lobby become a meaningful voter bloc?
• BSV gets 51% attacked

Sponsor notes:

• This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit  withum.com/crypto.
• Eventus, the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Its award-winning trade surveillance platform is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. Find them at onthebrink.link/eventus

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George Selgin, director of the Center of Monetary Alternatives at the Cato Institute joins the show to discuss Bitcoin, Free Banking, and stablecoins. In this episode: 

• Why George refers to Bitcoin as a synthetic commodity money
• Why George was excited by the possibility for synthetic commodity money
• What conditions would have to hold for Bitcoin to be considered money
• Why money is a spectrum rather than binary
• Are stablecoins prone to bank runs?
• Is Tether’s melange of underlying collateral sufficient?
• How should stablecoins be regulated?
• Why are regulators looking into stablecoins today?
• Comparing stablecoins to Money Market Mutual Funds
• Why money market funds broke the buck in 08
• Are stablecoins as systemic as money market funds?
• George’s objections to Gorton and Zhang’s paper on free banking and stablecoins
• George’s definition of free banking
• Was the 1830s-60s period in the U.S. a period of genuine free banking?
• The actual causes of bank failures in the pre-Civil War period
• Why ‘unit banking’ was so fragile
• What lessons can be taken from Canada’s experience with free banking in that era
• Why the history of Free Banking is a red herring in the stablecoin debate
• George’s recommendations for a primer on free banking
• George’s reflections on Hal Finney’s reference to his work
• Why bank failures are often the consequence of regulation

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• Selgin, Synthetic Commodity Money 
• The Alt-M Blog
• Selgin, Money Free and Unfree
• White, Free Banking in Britain
• Selgin, The Theory of Free Banking
• Dowd, The Experience of Free Banking
• Gorton and Zhang, Taming Wildcat Stablecoins

Sponsor notes: 

• This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit  withum.com/crypto.

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Matt and Nic return for another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• Warren’s shadowy super coders
• Was Digicash the first stablecoin?
• Is TVL overrated?
• Castle Island adds a new partner
• An anti crypto rider inserted into the Congress infrastructure bill
• Does taxation pay for government spending?
• Goldman applies for a ‘DeFi ETF’
• Exxon looking at flare gas?
• China’s crackdown on big tech

Sponsor notes: 

• This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit  withum.com/crypto.
• Eventus, the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Its award-winning trade surveillance platform is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. Find them at onthebrink.link/eventus

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We welcome Michel Rauchs, research affiliate and longtime contributor to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance which just released an update its Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index featuring new mining location data. Covered in this episode: 

• Why Michel returned to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance
• The evolution of the CCAF’s miner benchmarking efforts
• The original motivation for the Bitcoin Energy Index
• The relationship between the CCAF and Cambridge University
• How to estimate energy consumption from hashrate figures
• The meaning of the confidence interval in the electricity consumption figures
• How CCAF amassed the CBECI mining map
• Is the pool sample for the mining map representative?
• Methodological drawbacks with miner location assessment
• Why the CCAF is still reluctant to determine a carbon emissions figure for Bitcoin
• New evidence regarding the seasonal hashrate migration
• Is the Chinese crackdown going to lower the carbon intensity of the Bitcoin network?
• Is country-level granularity sufficient to determine the energy mix of mining?
• How the CCAF devised comparisons between the Bitcoin network and other consumers of energy
• Does Bitcoin get held to a different standard than other industries?
• Michel’s experience talking to the press about Bitcoin energy consumption
• Has the narrative changed in the press at all?
• Michel’s level of optimism regarding the decarbonization of Bitcoin mining

This episode supported by: 

• Eventus, the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Its award-winning trade surveillance platform is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. Find them at onthebrink.link/eventus

Check out this episode!

Nic and Matt are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• We debate the merits of the Merritt parkway
• We reflect on the B Word conference
• SpaceX owns Bitcoin
• We cover the Elonfolio
• Gensler covers tokens giving synthetic exposure to underlying securities
• Are stablecoins appropriately regulated?
• Can stablecoins learn from the free banking era in the 1830s?
• Is there a future for Ripple or Stellar as a bridge currency?
• What’s next for US CBDCs?

Content mentioned: 

• Gary Gensler’s speech 
• Gerald Dwyer in AIER, What do Wildcat Banks tell us about Stablecoins? 

Sponsor notes:

This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. Wherever your company is at, from pre-seed to IPO, we have tailored solutions just for you. To learn what our advisory, tax and audit services can do for you, visit withum.com/crypto.

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Nic and Matt are back. In this episode: 

• Circle’s SPAC filing
• Circle’s evolution over the year
• The business model behind stablecoins
• Circle’s risk factor slides
• The SEC is targeting centralized exchanges for trading unregistered securities
• Senator Pat Toomey buys BTC and ETH
• Matt tries out the Blockfi credit card
• GBTC unlocks wrapping up this summer
• Why are congresspeople allowed to trade financial assets?
• Warren grumbles about crypto markets once again
• Bullish exchange is SPACing
• Fed vice chair Randal Quarles has some good takes on stablecoins and CBCS

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• Randal Quarles’ speech 
• Circle’s announcement on becoming a public company

Check out this episode!

Nic and Matt are back for a sideways week. In this episode: 

• BlockFi’s credit card comes out
• How mesopotamian clay tablets are blockchains
• Cambridge releases new data regarding bitcoin mining distribution
• Shapeshift decentralizes itself
• Can corporations successfully decentralize?
• Elizabeth Warren writes a letter to the SEC
• Larry Fink sees little demand for crypto

Sponsor notes:

This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. Wherever your company is at, from pre-seed to IPO, we have tailored solutions just for you. To learn what our advisory, tax and audit services can do for you, visit withum.com/crypto.

Check out this episode!