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exchanges / cap mkts

DAOs decentralized finance exchanges / cap mkts game theory stablecoins

·Oct. 21, 2021

DeFi 2.0 Primer (part 1): Rise of Protocol Owned Liquidity and Olympus DAO mechanics

Decentralized finance is formulating new mechanisms to correct for the pitfalls of liquidity mining, yield farming, and other early token distribution approaches. This is happening both at the level of individual projects like Alchemix or Fei, and at the level of industry wide consolidation through Olympus DAO and Tokemak. We explore where this evolution is going, and potential outcomes. In this first part of the analysis, we look closely at Olympus DAO, the concept of Protocol Owned Liquidity, and whether the economics make sense.

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exchanges / cap mkts Investing narrative zeitgeist

·Feb. 5, 2021

The post-FinTech New American Finance, and Robinhood’s $3.4B support of an 8MM-strong Reddit army that cost Wall Street $7B, with Will Beeson of Bella

In this conversation, we talk with Will Beeson of Bella and Rebank, about how the Internet/Reddit/Gamestop broke out financial market structure, the social contract, and what the new American finance structure will look like.

More specifically, we give some thought to which FinTech and Crypto companies win or lose from the GameStop adventure, the actual market structure issues that led to the suspension of Robinhood’s trading, and what’s next for the mobile broker, and finally, the social meaning of the war against hedge funds by Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets. Check out our conversation on these exciting new developments.

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Crypto enterprise blockchain exchanges / cap mkts regulation & compliance supply chain / trade

·Nov. 11, 2019

Blockchain progress through the lens of Binance’s $180MM profit and Greensill’s $1.5B SoftBank raise

Look at the difference between (1) building out the crypto asset class, and (2) operating infrastruture for a blockchain-based digital economy. There are so many little logic pot holes into which you could fall! There are so many things one could believe that make the whole thing make no sense at all! I am anchoring around two primary data points -- a Multicoin report about Binance's financial progress and its massive (though unaudited) $180 million profit in Q3 of 2019, and a post by supply chain company Centrifuge about marrying cashflow financing with the decentralized web.

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civilization and politics Crypto exchanges / cap mkts paytech regulation & compliance

·Sep. 13, 2021

The principle behind Mastercard’s CipherTrace acquisition, L1 growth, and IRS getting your bank data

Paying attention is the path to seeing and doing. Mastercard has bought CipherTrace to see blockchain-based finance, to launch new businesses, and to plug in more networks into its nexus. The crypto networks proliferate at every layer, creating more computation on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Fantom, and Solana. The US executive seeks to see more too, asking the banks for their records of financial transactions to enforce taxation compliance.

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digital transformation Embedded Finance enterprise blockchain exchanges / cap mkts mega banks neobank Open Banking open source

·Dec. 8, 2021

What Goldman’s institutional financial cloud on Amazon means for embedded finance

In this analysis, we focus on Goldman Sachs launching an institutional embedded finance offering within Amazon Web Services, and Thought Machine raising a unicorn round for its cloud core banking platform. We explore these developments by focusing on the emerging role of cloud providers as distributors of third party software, think through some of the implications on standalone fintechs and open banking, and check in on AI company Kensho. Last, we highlight the difference between Web3 and Web3 approaches to “cloud”, and suggest a path as to how those can be rationalized in the future.

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covid pandemic exchanges / cap mkts fixed income macroeconomics narrative zeitgeist venture capital

·Mar. 2, 2020

How Coronovirus impacts Fintech, Financial Markets, and the global Economy

I look at how the news about the spread of the coronovirus are cracking the global economic machine. Some may argue that the number of people effected is still low -- but that misses the entire point. The shock of a global pandemic has revealed weakness in the financial machine, sending the stock markets falling 10% year-to-date. Gross domestic product growth is expected to slow by billions of dollars, governments and central banks are unable to implement policy to compensate with rates at historic lows and borrowing at historic highs, public market valuations will tumble arithmetically, and private Fintech companies will lose a path to exit. At least that's what the conspiracy theorists want you to think!

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asset management exchanges / cap mkts Investing

·Oct. 1, 2021

Robinhood’s order flow disrupting equities and crypto market structure, with Paul Rowady of Alphacution

In this conversation, we chat with Paul Rowady is the Founder and Director of Research for Alphacution Research Conservatory and a 30-year veteran of proprietary, hedge fund and capital markets research, trading and risk advisory initiatives. Alphacution is a digitally-oriented research and strategic advisory platform focused on modeling and benchmarking the impacts of technology on global financial markets and the businesses of trading, asset management and banking. This data-driven approach allows Alphacution to reverse-engineer the operational dynamics of these market actors to showcase the most vivid and impactful themes among the field of available research providers and platforms.

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artificial intelligence civilization and politics exchanges / cap mkts philosophy

·Oct. 26, 2020

The AI cluster running on top of the Internet has data mined you, and has some deep fakes to sell you

This week, we look at:

Deep Fakes behind South Park creators' new parody, Sassy Justice
The AI-created author of the fake Hunter Biden intelligence report
GPT-3 winning the love and attention of people on Hacker News
How should we react to these robots and their desire to mess with our minds

Unlike equities, the crypto markets were born from machines, and are constructed from code. Hold dear the tokens in which you believe, and stay away from the stories of easy money. Nothing is easy. To win Russian roulette is not good fortune. It is, instead, a grave mistake to play a lethal game. Have you nothing to lose?

And then Brexit. And then Taiwan and China. And then Covid, again. And then, who knows.

From now on and forever, your counterparty is the data center running an AI cluster on top of the Internet. The data center that has already profiled you and knows everything about you. Bring the tinfoil hat.

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decentralized finance digital securities / STO digital transformation enterprise blockchain exchanges / cap mkts

·Jan. 29, 2021

The path from institutional finance (Goldman) to enterprise blockchain (PwC) to the $26B edge of DeFi innovation (Aave) with Ajit Tripathi

In this conversation, we talk Ajit Tripathi, currently the Head of Institutional Business at Aave and a former colleague of mine at ConsenSys, about the path from traditional finance, to enterprise blockchain and “DLT” consulting, to full-on decentralized finance.

Thinking about how to connect these worlds and different available journeys? Or the timeless risks developing in tranched DeFi that look like mortgage-backed securities? We even touch on hegelian dialectics! Check out our great conversation.

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exchanges / cap mkts gaming & sports governance identity and privacy Metaverse / xR NFTs and digital objects regulation & compliance Social / Community

·Sep. 6, 2021

Financial Mythmaking with $200MM of Loot NFTs and their growing world

We discuss the top-down and bottoms-up approaches to innovation and project building. For the former, we reference Australia’s draconian surveillance laws, and the integration of US driver’s licenses into Apple’s wallet. For the latter, we dive into the Ethereum-based Loot project and its incredible derivatives, $500MM token, and $200MM of volume. Last, we conclude by highlighting the role of creators on the coming wave of Fintech.

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