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.

Check out this episode!

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.

Check out this episode!

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.

Check out this episode!

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.

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Anton Katz and Ethan Feldman, the cofounders of Talos join the show. In this episode we discuss:

• Anton and Ethan’s path from roles at AQR and Broadway Technologies and into the world of cryptoassets
• The problem they are seeking to solve for market participants
• How the exchange and OTC liquidity landscape is evolving
• How custodians and exchanges have evolved their offerings
• The challenges of capital efficiency in the cryptoasset markets
• What it was like to fundraise in a bear market
• What is ahead for Talos

To learn more about Talos visit www.talos.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. 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!

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

• A new twist in the turkey tale
• Why airdrops historically haven’t work
• Sam Altman’s eyeball-based cryptocurrency
• Brady partners up with FTX
• The FCA tangles with Binance
• Nic’s paper on DeFi risks
• NYDIG deepens their bank partnerships
• Mexico’s bitcoin rebuke
• Coinbase’s aggressive new strategy
• The Bitcoin Mining Council shares Q2 data

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

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Jeff Kirt and Ted Rogers, CEO and board director of Greenidge Generation LLC respectively, join the show to discuss the Greenidge plant and Bitcoin mining operation in upstate New York. In this episode: 

• The origins of Greenidge
• Why Ted Rogers chose to join the Greenidge board
• How Atlas/Greenidge converted their NY plant from coal to natural gas
• Ted’s retrospective on the Segwit 2x drama in the context of the Crypto Mining Council
• How US-based mining has a lower carbon intensity than global miners at large
• Why Greenidge decided to offset their CO2 emissions and how they went about procuring them
• How natural gas has a much lower carbon intensity than coal
• Why banning Bitcoin in NY would actually raise the carbon intensity of Bitcoin
• How the energy debate ultimately comes down to the societal merit of Bitcoin
• How Greenidge sent 60% of their 2020 generated energy to the grid
• How Bitcoin mining has allowed Greenidge to run continuously and better contribute to grid stability
• Demystifying concerns about the trout habitat
• Has Greenidge fielded inquiries from mining firms looking to leave China?

Check out this episode!

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Matt and Nic are back for another rocky week in the markets. In this episode: 

• Our thoughts on the Chinese mining situation
• Is Sichuan being spared the crackdown?
• Why Bitcoin’s hashrate may not recover for a while
• Why China is cracking down on mining now
• How China’s ultra-high voltage transmission is affecting mining policy
• How is miner selling influencing price?
• Our remaining China grey swans
• Our theories on the relationship between price and hashrate
• The SEC settles another ICO from 2017
• Our analysis of the NYDIG/ core banking provider integrations
• Why social graph portability is so important
• Taleb writes a bad bitcoin paper
• Bitcoin still has a GBTC overhang

Content mentioned in the episode: 

• Nic in Coindesk, Go West, Bitcoin! Unpacking the Great Hashrate Migration
• NYDIG/FIS press release
• Rebuttals to Taleb’s paper on Bitcoin

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!

Hunter Horsley, the co-founder and CEO of Bitwise Asset Management joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

• Bitwise’s recent $70M Series B fundraise and how he approached building a roster of unique investors
• Views on what is driving interest in cryptoasset products
• Decentralized Finance and how Bitwise is approaching constructing products to enable exposure to this part of the market
• NFTs and how Hunter contextualizes this segment of the market

To learn more about Bitwise visit www.bitwiseinvestments.com. Follow Hunter on Twitter @HHorsley

Sponsor notes: 

• Aave is a decentralized, open source, and non-custodial protocol where users can deposits and borrow digital assets, and earn interest on those assets. Head over to aave.com to experience and learn more about DeFi.

Check out this episode!

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

• What’s the biggest story with Bukele that isn’t being covered?
• Is Bukele motivated by a sanctions threat from the US?
• Will Salvadorians use the Lightning Network?
• How Bitcoin elevates heads of state in the popular consciousness
• Nic’s paper on DeFi protocol risks
• The SEC’s year-ahead agenda has no mention of Bitcoin
• The NY anti-mining bill fails
• The World Bank joins the IMF in spurning El Salvador
• Is the Salvadorian law a ‘forced tender law’?

Content mentioned: 

• Max Raskin in the WSJ: A Global First: Bitcoin as National Currency

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 and recovered from an insane Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami. In this episode: 

• Our lost roundup from last week
• Our reflections on Bitcoin 2021
• Nic reacts to his spaces with President Bukele
• El Salvador accepts Bitcoin
• The story behind the 25k attendee Twitter space
• Does the Salvadorian law change the accounting treatment for Bitcoin in the US?
• President Bukele’s geothermal
• Where else is the Bitcoinización likely to happen?
• A new non-aligned movement
• The Bitcoin Bloc
• MSTR’s new bond offering
• Basel changes the rules for bank regulatory capital regarding Bitcoin
• Liz Warren attacks Bitcoin
• The Bitcoin political demographic grows

Content: 

• Recording of Nic’s spaces room with President Bukele (and 25,000 others) 

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!

In our second OTB AMA, we field questions from Brink Nation. In this episode: 

• What other countries are good candidates to ratify Bitcoin next?
• What are the prospects for DeFi on Bitcoin?
• Is price to hashrate a viable ratio to use to value bitcoin?
• Will other countries follow El Salvador’s lead in light of the pushback from the IMF?
• Who will win Euro2020?
• Are ransomware attacks good because they will get directors to add Bitcoin to corporate balance sheets “just in case”?
• Will users eventually hold their bitcoin through banks?
• What is missing to make lightning workable?
• Why do people allocate energy cost pro rata across bitcoin transactions?
• Matt’s turkey update
• Stablecoin yields as an attractive product for corporate treasuries?
• Why doesn’t bitcoin just increase the block size?
• Our takes on DAOs
• What govt action could turn bitcoiners into dissidents?
• Our proposed improvements for twitter spaces

Sponsor notes: 

Aave is a decentralized, open source, and non-custodial protocol where users can deposits and borrow digital assets, and earn interest on those assets. Head over to aave.com to experience and learn more about DeFi.

Check out this episode!