Joel Revill is the cofounder and CEO of Two Ocean Trust, a Wyoming Chartered Trust Company offering wealth management services to high-net-worth individuals and family offices.

Two Ocean Trust has recently received a no-action letter from the Wyoming Division of Banking stating the division’s determination that Two Ocean is a “qualified custodian” under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and the SEC Custody Rule. This letter states the division’s determination that Two Ocean may provide custodial services for digital assets under Wyoming law, including virtual currency and digital tokenized securities. In this episode:

• Joel’s background and the genesis of Two Ocean Trust
• Current gaps in the market as far as digital asset custody is concerned
• The significance of Two Ocean’s No-Action letter from the State of Wyoming
• What Qualified Custody actually means, and why it matters
• Why Wyoming is a great place to start a business pertaining to digital assets
• The history of the SPDI Charter – and why Two Ocean did not opt for the SPDI
• Why high net worth individuals are buying Bitcoin today
• Joel’s current monetary outlook – and why Bitcoin is more than just a hedge

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

• PTJ’s latest comments on Bitcoin
• How Bitcoin is akin to a cathedral
• Franklin Templeton invests in Curv
• PayPal launches a crypto offering
• Will PayPal open up its walled garden?
• The Kik story finally reaches a conclusion
• Coinbase publishes their first transparency report
• Paradigm’s big bet
• Is CBDC going to be pro-inflationary?
• The bank lobby pushes back at the Wyoming SPDI
• Why this bull run is more sustainable than that of 2017
• How Bitcoin scales with capital, not people

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Doubleline, The Pandora’s Box of CBDC
• Paul Tudor Jones appears on CNBC
• Coinbase, Transparency at Coinbase
• Forbes, feature on Paradigm
• Raoul Pal, The Bitcoin Life Raft 
• Bank Policy Institute, Beware the Kraken

Check out this episode!

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

• NYDIG emerges from stealth and announces a Bitcoin balance sheet position
• More companies add Bitcoin to their balance sheet
• Filecoin launches at a $200b implied fully diluted valuation
• Is the Filecoin SAFT different from the other SAFTs?
• Why token projects are strongly incentivized to be untransparent about their tokens
• CFTC chair Heath Tarbert praises Ethereum
• The relationship between securities and commodities
• Ripple complains about securities regulation and claims China controls Bitcoin
• Grayscale Ether Trust becomes an SEC reporting entity
• Grayscale raises $1b in Q3
• Breitling creates NFTs as an anti-counterfeiting measure
• Risks involved with brainwallets
• Coinbase plans to sponsor Bitcoin developers
• A new deadline in the Mt Gox saga

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• Crypto VC panel on privacy from the Fidelity privacy conference
• Ripple, What’s at Stake for the U.S. When It Comes to Digital Asset Regulation
• The Block’s new data dashboard
• Bitmex Research, Call me Ishmael
• Ryan Castellucci talk at DevCon, Cracking Cryptocurrency Brainwallets

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Kyle Samani, cofounder and managing partner at Multicoin, joins the show to talk his current views on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and to give an update on web3 and how Multicoin is approaching the opportunity. In this episode: 

• Kyle’s current views on Ethereum, its positioning, and its prospects for filling out the roadmap
• Whether liquidity network effects for smart contract chains are insurmountable
• What it would take to reach global scale for public blockchains
• Kyle’s changing view of Bitcoin over time
• The effect of WBTC on Ethereum
• The topic that Kyle has most dramatically changed his mind on recently
• Kyle’s view of the validity of DCF valuations for DeFi tokens
• Kyle’s theory on which classes of DeFi tokens should accrue long-term value
• A retrospective on Multicoin’s EOS thesis and where they were tripped up
• Which blog post of his Kyle thinks has aged the best
• What Web3 means to Kyle
• How fast Web3 has grown relative to Kyle’s expectations in 2017
• The imminent Web3 projects that Kyle thinks could have mass market applicability
• Multicoin’s Helium thesis and the importance of LoRaWAN
• How Helium tokenomics are modeled after physical commodities
• Kyle’s expectations for web3 applications within the next 5 years
• Whether Ethereum requires web3 to succeed and vice versa

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Multicoin, EOS Analysis and Valuation 
• Multicoin, On Forking DeFi Protocols
• Multicoin, Augur Analysis and Valuation

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Mason Borda, CEO and cofounder of Tokensoft, joins the show. In this episode: 

• Tokensoft’s ERC-1404 standard
• Why put securities on chain?
• Commonalities between the spirit of securities laws and the values of crypto markets
• The possibility of making stock transactions into a real time phenomenon
• Transparency through registered security offerings versus on-chain cash flows and freely viewable contracts
• How on-chain tokens are transparent and where they should volunteer additional disclosures
• Tokensoft’s Arcoin and INX issuances
• Mason’s response to the critiques of the INX offering
• Why regular companies don’t just “hold their own securities on a centralized database”
• DTCC explained for Bitcoiners
• How Mason thinks about securities regulation today as compared with 2017
• Is the ‘complexity defense’ sufficient to ward off securities regulators?
• Mason’s desired approach to the market from the SEC
• Lessons that the SEC can take from MAS (Singapore) and FINMA (Switzerland)
• The outstanding barriers to security tokens gaining liquidity and market share

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Matt and Nic cover deals and news of the week. Repeat guest Zachary Kelman joins the show to give his view of the FinCEN files and how the crypto industry should interpret the revelations. In this episode: 

• How fees affect DeFi liquidity and the price of ETH
• Braintrust raises $18m
• Bitnomial raises an $11m Series B
• Arthur Hayes and Sam Reed step down from their roles at 100x
• Despite everything, Bitmex is still operational
• BitMEX keeps processing withdrawals
• India’s legislature turns hostile to Bitcoin
• Square buys $50m worth of BTC to hold on its balance sheet
• The difference in the rationale between Microstrategy and Square for their Bitcoin positions
• John MacAfee is arrested in Spain for tax evasion
• Ripple complains that the US is an unfavorable regulatory environment
• The latest on the Ripple class action suit
• The Chamber of Digital Commerce gives congresspeople $50 worth of USA-mined Bitcoin
• The DOJ publishes a Cryptocurrency Enforcement Framework
• Zach Kelman on how Bitcoin enthusiasts should be thinking about the FinCEN files
• Silvergate crosses $100b transacted through the SEN

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• Peter Van Valkenburgh, There Is No Such Thing as a Decentralized Exchange
• Fidelity Digital Assets, The Role of Prime Brokerage in Digital Assets
• Nic on Medium, Public blockchain fee cyclicality and negative feedback loops
• Forbes, How Cathie Wood Beat Wall Street By Betting Tesla Is Worth More Than $1 Trillion
   

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Mitchell Nicholson is the founder of DACS Conduit and formerly an economist at the Bank of Canada. Mitchell’s views are his own and not those of the Bank of Canada. In this episode:

• His path to joining the Bank of Canada
• Why he chose to start his career in central banking
• Mitchell’s work on the Band of Canada Bitcoin awareness surveys
• Why the Bank of Canada put resources to the Bitcoin awareness surveys
• Mitchell’s masters thesis on Bitcoin
• How covering Bitcoin was part of Mitchell’s mandate at the Bank of Canada
• Their reaction to Quadriga
• How Crypto Twitter helped was useful to Mitchell during his time at the bank
• What it’s like being a Bitcoin enthusiast working at a central bank
• Crypto penetration among Bank staff
• How Mitchell applied lessons from traditional finance to his analysis of Bitcoin
• Mitchell’s thoughts on the legitimacy of Tether
• Comparing the risk profiles of single and multi collateral Dai
• Lessons that Bitcoiners can take from central banking
• Whether central banks should be concerned about crypto-dollarization
• The prospects for CBDCs
• Why the public sector may not be able to create a true digital cash with strong privacy assurances
• What a more restricted digital form of central bank money might look like
• Mitchell’s view of the true killer app of the crypto industry
• Mitchell’s new project now that he has left the BoC
• The one big gap Mitchell has identified in the crypto industry
• The likely effect of the rise of crypto markets on central banking

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• The Bank of Canada’s 2018 Bitcoin Omnibus Survey: Awareness and Usage
• Chainalysis’ 2020 Global Crypto Adoption Report

Check out this episode!

Trent and Brock Elmore, two of the five creators of Yam Finance, a decentralized finance protocol, join the show. In this episode we discuss:

• The inspiration for starting Yam Finance
• The story behind the launch, the initial bug and the subsequent re-launch
• Contextualizing DeFi – what is a fad and what is enduring
• The future for Yam Finance and the long term sustainability of fair launch platforms

To learn more about Yam Finance visit: https://yam.finance/

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Chase Lochmiller, cofounder and CEO of Crusoe Energy Systems joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

• Crusoe’s approach to addressing the issue of natural gas flaring by monetizing stranded energy
• The process by which Crusoe turns this stranded energy into Bitcoin
• How Chase sees the compute use cases that can benefit from capturing stranded energy
• Chase’s career path from finance to crypto to founding Crusoe
• The impact that successfully climbing Mount Everest has had on his career.

To learn more about Crusoe Energy Systems visit their website.

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Nic and Matt cover a tumultuous week in the crypto markets. In this episode: 

• We investigate the Dollar Milkshake Theory
• BitPanda raises $52m
• Genesis announces the official launch of their custody product
• Our breakdown of the BitMEX situation
• Where the BitMEX situation leaves the remaining offshore crypto exchanges
• The prospects for users who currently have funds on BitMEX
• How the BitMEX lawsuit potentially improves the prospects for a Bitcoin ETF
• Whether BitMEX was a source of sell pressure for Bitcoin
• Where BitMEX leaves decentralized exchanges
• The SEC obtains a summary judgment over Kik
• Why the SALT lending settlement with the SEC signals a shift in the SEC’s attitude with regards to tokens
• CommerceBlock converts their token into equity into a UK company
• Talos Trading comes out of stealth mode
• The biggest remaining systemic risk that the crypto industry faces

Check out this episode!

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

• The OCC clarifies that banks can custody dollars for stablecoin issuers
• Maker’s flippening in collateral types, and what that means for the system
• Tether falls below 80% of stablecoin market share
• Two congressional bills propose to federally regulate crypto exchanges and tokens
• “Stablecoins” or “cryptodollars”?
• Cambridge AltFin releases their long-awaited cryptoasset benchmarking report
• The prospects for big tech antritrust
• What to replace the 60/40 portfolio with

Content mentioned in this episode:

• OCC, OCC Chief Counsel’s Interpretation on National Bank and Federal Savings Association Authority to Hold Stablecoin Reserves
• Coin Center, Two new bills in Congress would clarify agency jurisdiction over cryptocurrency
• Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, 3rd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study
• ECB Crypto-assets Task Force, Stablecoins: Implications for monetary policy, financial stability, market infrastructure and payments, and banking supervision in the euro area
• Apolline Blandin on OTB, Estimating Bitcoin’s Energy Footprint

Check out this episode!

Jeff Dorman is the CIO at Arca, which is currently engaged in a fascinating standoff with Gnosis, a token project in which they have a position. Arca is asserting that Gnosis has delivered little value to tokenholders and has proposed that they perform a tender offer for GNO tokens with the assets held on their balance sheet (which exceed the capitalization of GNO). Covered in this episode: 

• The original purpose of Gnosis as laid out in the whitepaper
• Why Gnosis only sold 5% of their tokens in the initial sale
• How Gnosis’s dutch auction backfired
• How the original objective to create a prediction market failed
• The history of Gnosis’ non-core products and expenditures – and why they don’t accrue value to GNO
• Under what circumstances pivoting is permissible – and when it isn’t
• The existence of obligations towards tokenholders, even if implicit and unstated
• What should a well-codified arrangement between tokenholders and token issuers look like?
• Jeff’s view of whether the utility theory of tokens is still valid
• The substance of Arca’s proposal to Gnosis, and their preferred resolution
• Arca’s proposal around a tender offer to buy back GNO at a fixed price with treasury assets
• Why large investors exerting themselves in governance benefits smaller shareholders
• How Arca’s GNO position is similar to the ESG movement
• Arca’s response to the rebuttal that tokenholders have no rights
• Arca’s leverage to achieve a positive outcome – and willingness to litigate
• Whether explicit security tokens like Arcoin and INX will converge to tokens with equity-like characteristics

Check out this episode!

Tom Lombardi, Managing Director at 3iQ Corp, joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

• Tom’s path from traditional finance to the cryptoasset industry
• The enterprise blockchain era: lessons learned and the second order effects of the hype cycle
• The state of institutional exchange infrastructure
• The crypto-asset-management segment and how 3iQ is positioned to capture this opportunity

To learn more visit www.3iq.ca and follow Tom on Twitter @tomlombardi  

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Kyle Davies, co-founder of Three Arrows Capital, joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

• Kyle’s perspectives on layer one blockchain protocols and how smart contract platforms are evolving
• The decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape, and where Kyle sees the biggest opportunities
• The blurring of the lines between centralized and decentralized finance platforms

Learn more about Three Arrows Capital: https://www.threearrowscap.com/

Follow Kyle on Twitter @kyled116

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Matt and Nic return to cover news of the week. In this episode: 

• Our review of NFL week 1
• Whether or not securities law topics come up at parties
• Why we’re so excited about Kraken getting the Wyoming SPDI
• Why the SPDI being full reserve is so important – and why it eliminates certain regulators from the picture
• How Kraken’s bank charter is reminiscent of a classic scene in There Will Be Blood
• Why Wyoming’s SPDI is a long-awaited rebuke to Operation Choke Point
• Michael Saylor stacks MORE sats
• How Matt was able to initially break the Microstrategy news
• Why financial services firms looking at crypto need buy-in from the top
• Michael Saylor’s revealing quote about Bitcoin’s hard forks
• Why shrugging off hard forks defeats a key critique of Bitcoin
• What the SEC settlement with Unikorn inc means for other tokens
• The SEC sanctions rapper TI
• Matt’s embarrassing TI story
• Our current view on handshakes
• Why the settlement quality of stablecoins is context-specific

Check out this episode!

Today, Kraken Financial, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kraken, became the first financial institution to receive the Special Purpose Depository Institution (SPDI) charter from the State of Wyoming. To celebrate this major milestone, David Kinitsky, CEO of Kraken Financial, and Marco Santori, Kraken CLO, joined us on the show. In this episode: 

• Why Kraken decided to open an office in Wyoming and pursue the SPDI
• Why David and Marco chose to join Kraken and work on this project
• Kraken’s journey to obtaining the SPDI and what’s next
• Why Kraken Financial will not seek oversight from the FDIC – and why it doesn’t need deposit insurance
• What an SPDI will enable Kraken to do
• What distinguishes a full reserve bank – and why take that approach
• How Kraken Financial would distinguish itself from the standard banks that service crypto companies and from full reserve bitcoin custodians
• Whether Kraken expects NY to honor reciprocity for the Wyoming SPDI
• The relationship between Kraken group and Kraken Financial
• The next steps to take the SPDI approval and become an operational, fully-fledged deposit taking institution
• What the SPDI will mean for existing Kraken customers 

Read more about the SPDI here. 

Check out this episode!

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

• the NFL is BACK
• Matt’s predictions for the Patriots season
• New data on countries where crypto penetration is highest
• Mastercard launches a CBDC testing platform
• USDC launches on Algorand
• Past is prologue for stablecoins moving chains
• DCG continues to grow into a juggernaut
• Our Sushiswap explainer
• Can DeFi projects maintain sustainable moats?
• What distinguishes DeFi tokens from ICOs?
• Why you can’t apply traditional equity earnings multiples to DeFi valuations
• How Sushi reminds us of Monero’s origins
• How Curve reminds us of Dash’s launch
• Why communities often stick with botched ‘fair launches’

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• Avichal Garg and Curtis Spencer on On The Brink
• Ruben Galindo appears on the show
• Jump Capital’s mid-2020 crypto theses
• Chainalysis’ 2020 global crypto adoption index
• Bitcoin: A Novel Economic Institution from Ark Invest

Check out this episode!

Gabriel Shapiro, partner at BSV Law (no relationship to the coin), joins the show to chat securities law, tokenized securities, and the nature of industry regulation. In this episode: 

• Gabriel’s introduction to the crypto industry and Nick Szabo’s influence
• Gabriel’s view on what public blockchains are for, most fundamentally
• Why there is an inherent tension between blockchains and the law
• Can public blockchains be made compatible with the law, and to what extent?
• The best opportunities for synergy between the law and crypto
• Gabriel’s case for real tokenized securities
• How stock certificates are held and organized in legacy markets
• Domains where tokenized securities could outperform the current state of affairs
• A mistake investors make when interpreting SEC behavior
• Why the SEC will often let private litigation play out before imposing a fine
• The contrast between the EOS/Block One and Sia/ Nebulous
• Gabriel’s critique of Hester Pierce’s safe harbor for tokens – and her response
• Precedents to consider when looking at the utility/security distinction
• Whether a “Hinman test” for sufficient decentralization exists and what it entails
• Gabriel’s proposed modification to securities laws to suit the reality of the industry
• The effect of election outcomes on securities enforcement

Follow Gabriel on Twitter and read his fantastic series on Medium, Size Does Matter

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Ruben Galindo, cofounder and CEO of Airtm, joins the show. Recently, Airtm has been in the news as it was reported that Juan Guaidó, Venezuela’s would-be President, was using the app to coordinate the disbursement of funds seized from the Maduro regime to healthcare workers in Venezuela. In this episode:

• Why Ruben cofounded Airtm 
• How Airtm creates local liquidity for dollars against any local currency
• How Airtm manages their reserve
• How Bitcoin and Ethereum intersect with AirUSD
• How Airtm creates local liquidity on their platform
• The size of Airtm’s userbase globally and in Venezuela
• Why international freelancers gravitate towards AirTM
• The genesis of Airdrop Venezuela
• How Airtm linked up with Venezuelan president Juan Guaido to distribute payments to Venezuelans
• The genesis of the plan to distribute seized funds to Venezuelan healthcare workers
• How Airtm is planning to route around Maduro’s attempts at censorship
• How Airtm manages the physical risks of running a grey market business in Venezuela

Read more about Airtm here.

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Avichal Garg and Curtis Spencer, founding partners of Electric Capital, join the show. In this episode we discuss:

• Their path from entrepreneurship to starting Electric Capital
• The experience of raising a $110M fund II from institutional limited partners
• The current state of play for layer one smart contract platforms
• Framing decentralized finance for the non-crypto native
• The geopolitical chess match for the USA and China vis a vis cryptoasset regulation
• The outlook for privacy coins

To learn more about Electric Capital visit their website and follow Avichal and Curtis on Twitter

Check out this episode!