23 Burst results for "Below 18.5"
HASHR8
A highlight from Auradines 4nm Bitcoin Miner w/ Barun Kar and Rajiv Khemani
"Welcome back to The Mining Pod. On today's show, we're joined by Auradine, a new Bitcoin mining ESIC manufacturer coming to market. We talk about the unit specs, the team behind the machine, and how they expect to compete in an ever -crowded market. Did you know that you can make more money by merge mining other networks? Check out MakeMoreMoneyMining .com for information on BIPs 300 and 301, a proposal to bring more revenue to Bitcoin miners through sidechains and merge mining, called DriveChains. Increase your mining revenues and learn more about participating in Bitcoin governance by visiting MakeMoreMoneyMining .com. Are you a miner who wants to activate Bitcoin improvements? Check out Activation .Watch. See what Bitcoin improvements the Bitcoin community, developers, and miners are considering and show support by signaling for one of many BIPs up for consideration. Activation .Watch. Filecoin's mission is to create a decentralized, efficient, and robust storage infrastructure for humanity's information. Join the Filecoin Foundation team October 3 -5 for PhilVegas, the first major Filecoin community event in North America in 2023, to explore how to adapt data storage for an AI -centric future. Participate in conversations and hear keynotes focused on the importance of data integrity in the world of artificial intelligence. Register to attend and learn more at phil -vegas .io and make sure to use promo code miningpod. Hey MiningPod, I'm Lee Bratcher, President of the Texas Blockchain Council. The Texas Blockchain Summit is now the North American Blockchain Summit. The same emphasis on policy, energy, and Bitcoin mining, but now expanded by working with our partners across the country. We've got great sponsors lined up like Riot, Marathon, GDA, CleanSpark, BitDeer, Lantium, Cormant, Compass, HTS, Crypto Power, Priority Power, Sunoda, and many more. Solidify your trust in the world of artificial intelligence and the world of artificial intelligence. We'll see you there. Hello, welcome back to the MiningPod. I'm Will Foxley, joined today by Rajeev and Varun from Auradine. Thank you so much for joining today. We're really excited to talk about the new ASIC product you guys are bringing to the market. How are you guys doing? Doing great. Thanks for having us, Will. Definitely. You know, the market's clamoring to know more about you guys. The first time I heard about you was from someone who reads into Marathon Digital's deep SEC letters that they put out there, their filings. And they're like, what is this company Auradine? What's going on with this? And people are wondering about it. And then we found out this summer, you guys were public, you guys raised $81 million and there's a lot of momentum around the product you guys are bringing to market. So that's why we're having you on the show today because people have a lot of questions. I'm sure you guys are excited to start producing a new miner for the Bitcoin mining market. So let's just start there. If we could get an intro for both you guys, like your past backgrounds, what Auradine is doing, and then also on the product. My name is Rajeev Kimani. I am a Silicon Valley technology executive and entrepreneur. I've been in Silicon Valley for 30 plus years. Have been involved in multiple successful startup companies, as well as being a C -level executive in public companies. My background is in computer science and engineering, and then also an MBA from Stanford. And this is my fourth startup that we believe is going to be bigger and better than those other companies before this. Yeah, my name is Barun Kaur. So my last company was Palo Alto Networks. I was in the founding team and did two more startups before that. And I started my career at Motorola after I finished my PhD. Awesome. Thanks for that background. Fortune just did a great piece on you guys for like detailing the company. And it started from the question like, how did this company raise $81 million just like on the background here? And maybe you guys have some disagreements with that, but that aside, I like the ending of the whole fortune piece, which we'll link in the show notes, which is, and you guys are coming into a crowded market and raise a lot of money based on your background, based on the things that you guys have built before and as exited from successfully. So with that being said, let's talk about Auradine, the product that you guys are bringing to market and where you see it fitting into the competition landscape. Yeah, we started Auradine with a big vision and the vision was to build an infrastructure company for the next generation of the web infrastructure. And we believe that blockchain AI and privacy are fundamental building blocks that will really revolutionize how we all work and play. And we think that as we started to look at these spaces, we started with blockchain Bitcoin being the biggest blockchain and the most successful that there is. And then during that process, we connected with marathon. And what we said is, what can we do that's innovative and different than what has existed before us. And prior to us, as you know, what has happened is that Bitcoin mining has gone from CPU's to GPU's to ASICs. And then all of the ASIC providers have moved, have essentially been Chinese companies. And so what we saw was two things. One is that we need to provide a very robust US supplier of this technology, which is very important, especially for US and North American miners in general. So that was a very important aspect. But the second aspect is, was to do something that is much more symbiotic and constructive for the energy ecosystem. And so we have done a lot of innovation in bringing out this product, which is our very first product. It's the first four nanometer ASIC in the world. And we've executed extremely fast when people look at us that literally within from start to getting a product out in the market is not much greater than a year. But we have executed extremely fast on this. As you can imagine, we have an amazing roadmap in front of us. And we have some amazing capabilities in our first product. So we are super excited to bring the Teraflux mining product line to market. Awesome. Yeah. So it's kind of going on that whole line. Tell me a little bit about like the market you guys are building in. I noticed that you guys are building within the US, as opposed to Bitmain and others who are building mostly out of East Asia. Bitmain of course has moved its facilities a lot of times and they're mostly out of Malaysia. But then even like the chips themselves are coming out of Taiwan or in the case of MicroBT, they're coming out of South Korea. Tell me about your guys' supply chain, where you guys get your ASIC parts and how you guys choose to manufacture your whole machine. Yes. So I'll give an overview and Varun can add to it. But essentially, well, first of all, we are a US company. So we are a US incorporated company. Secondarily, the chip design is entirely done in the US. So we are based in Silicon Valley. All of our engineers are based here. So that's a second very important piece of it. So all of the intellectual property, the second. The third thing that we are doing is that we are, in terms of the foundries, we are working with the leading foundries. But what we paid extra attention to is that whatever technology that we use has a manufacturing plant in the United States. Now, turns out the two leading foundries, TSMC and Samsung, both have US manufacturing locations. And we wanted to make sure that those chips could be manufactured in the US. Very, very important aspect for us. And so, you know, even though some of the Chinese companies have moved to other parts, the reality is that the US has restrictions about access to leading edge process technology. There are tariffs. Are those companies bypassing tariffs using certain corporate models or not? Those are questions that are yet to be answered completely. But that's something that we have to do that for the US vendors. Awesome. Yeah. So let's go into the product itself a little bit more. And I like what you noted about like the difference of tariff restrictions. I think the geopolitical issue with ASIC importation itself is an under discussed topic. So from what we're seeing from public numbers right now, it looks like you guys released 22 joules per tariff for this machine with a plus or minus 8%. Curious a little bit more about some of these details. You guys can take this question as you want. Is this on the chip level or the system level? What do you think about that 8 % deviation from the 22 joules per tariff hash? Is that like higher or lower than you're seeing from competitors? And then from there, let's talk about the four nanometer chip that you guys are working on. Yeah. So this is the first product is four nanometers. The specs that we've done are at a system level, not at a chip level, because at the end of the day, customers care about system level specs. And then the plus or minus 8%, what happens is when you're in the leading edge process technology node and you're building the silicon, when you're manufacturing the silicon, there's a deviation in the capabilities of the silicon. And so that is really to capture that. Now, in terms of our competitors, we've seen numbers that are plus or minus five, and actually in other cases, plus or minus 10 % as well. Now we are early in the game. So as we get more and more learnings from building larger quantities of products, we can refine those numbers, make it a little more tighter. We may be able to improve some of these efficiency numbers as well, but we are coming from the point of view of being somewhat conservative. Other vendors before us have tried to be aggressive and then have missed expectations. And we hear that from customers. And so our goal based on our prior track records is to try to see if we can be somewhat conservative and delight people on the upside. So that's our philosophy. Barun, anything? No, I think that's... Great. I don't know if you guys have released these numbers and it'd be curious to see if you have or have not, but hash rate and then power at the wall. Have you guys discussed those publicly yet? Yeah, the hash rates, you know what, the world before our product, which is up till now, is that typically people give you a miner that runs at a certain terahash rate and has a certain efficiency. And what happens is that today, if you want to be able to go up and down, people refer to that as overclock or underclock. That requires either a firmware change or a different firmware, or you have to change the control board, or you have to write software on top of it to turn on and off these systems very kludgy. It's really, I would say it's still in the dark ages, so to speak, relative to the rest of the technology infrastructure. And that's because Bitcoin came from being more of a hobbyist product to the data center scale product. And it has done a bunch of batch work along the way. What we have in our systems is we have built in from the ground up the capability to go up and down in terahash rates, all the way from zero to 185 in our air -cooled systems, in our immersion systems to much higher numbers, some of which we haven't disclosed. And you can do that very fast. And that's super important for people who want to work with energy partners to bring down energy consumption and take advantage of some of those curtailment related economics that we get in a very rapid timeframe. So we have all of those capabilities built into the system. We refer to that as energy tune. It's patented technology. And I think people are going to love it when they see it. So we've done that. But in addition, what we've also done is we've made sure that these systems keep operating at high temperature ranges, which again is critical, as you know, in certain parts of the country, temperatures are getting hotter than they used to be, and miners are shut down for 10, 20, 30 percent of the time. In our case, it will keep running and will keep hashing and keep providing the economics to the miners. Awesome. For the four nanometer part, I want to go back to that. The energy efficiency, there's this general idea that as we go down to the size of the node from eight to seven to six to five to four, it's supposed to become more energy efficient. Tell me a little bit about that and energy efficiencies you guys are capturing within your new model and also how it compares to the market as of now. Yeah. So today, most of the products that are shipping are in five nanometer or older process nodes. To achieve energy efficiency, you do need leading edge process technology. In addition, what you also need is design and architecture to enable that. These Bitcoin mining systems run at very, very low voltages, and to make that work at very low voltages relative to every other product is a complex engineering and technology effort. And so we have both of those things in motion. As I said, we started the company literally a year and a half ago, and we have brought to market a product in record time, matching the best in class that exists in the world today. We have more tricks up our sleeve as we bring additional products to the world at Halfing and beyond. And we believe we are going to be the best in the world, if not within plus or minus a few percent of the best in the world. Both now as well as we go forward. So super confident of that. Right now, as you know, the world is in kind of the 21 plus or minus in terms of deployments. We think it's going to get much better than here. But when we talk to customers, we see there are certain customers that are very sensitive in cost of the miners. Others are more sensitive in the efficiency. But both of them care extremely about the variability and the energy tune features, which we think is going to become a must have requirement going forward. So yeah, let's talk about the auto tune features that you guys have put into this. From my understanding, there's a patent around this. How do you guys look at this technology compared to some of the other technologies that are out there? I mean, there's definitely lots of different firmware options for controlling a miner and controlling its temperature setting. What are you guys sort of doing different when you're building this unit holistically? Yeah, very different. Very different than anything that has been done before. So in the past, typically at a single miner level, you could actually run it at a certain terahash rate or shut down the miner, put it in sleep mode. Then more recently, people have started to put together an eco mode, if you will. That's the state of the art that exists today. And what people have tried to do is solve some of these fundamental problems through putting software level turning on and off of the miners. Not the most efficient way to do it. What we have done it is things that are inside a miner. And so we have these capabilities that are unique, very different than anything else that's been done before, where inside the miner through API calls, the hardware is able to change and adjust the various terahash rates and so forth. And what all you do is you just give all these inputs to the miner, and the miner figures out how to do it and does it, rather than trying to do it in a crudgy fashion outside through some software mechanisms. So that's very different, and that's where we have a patent for the energy tune and autotune capabilities. As you might expect, things like Bitcoin price, energy cost, transaction fees, temperature, all of those are inputs into trying to figure out what is the optimal point for the miner to run. More and more variables are coming into the picture. And to top it off also, autotune has the ability to go to tens of thousands of miners and be able to do an energy tune on each of them at the get -go. And we are trying to get to a point where we can do it in a few seconds so that it is in line with customer requirements where curtailment can happen at that short period of time. Now, there's a distinct difference between... So the autotune is one feature and there's the energy tune is another feature. Now, the energy tune also to couple with what Rajeev mentioned, we are using a machine learning techniques to do dynamic voltage frequency scaling so that each chip can be tuned to get to the optimal joules per terahash. Are you a retail or institutional investor interested in Bitcoin mining companies? The MinerMag brings you free data and analysis from all major NASDAQ listed Bitcoin mining operations to know who stands out. Check out visualized metrics and data dependent stories at theminermag .com. Filecoin's mission is to create decentralized efficient and robust storage infrastructure for humanities information. Join the Filecoin Foundation team October 3rd through 5th for PhilVegas, the first major Filecoin community event in North America in 2023 to explore how to adapt data storage for an AI centric future. Participate in conversations and hear keynotes focused on the importance of data integrity in the world of artificial intelligence. Register to attend and learn more at phil -vegas .io and make sure to use promo code miningpod. Did you know that you can make more money by merge mining other networks? Check out makemoremoneymining .com for information on BIPs 300 and 301, a proposal to bring more revenue to Bitcoin miners through sidechains and merge mining called DriveChains. Increase your mining revenues and learn more about participating in Bitcoin governance by visiting makemoremoneymining .com. Are you a miner who wants to activate Bitcoin improvements? Check out activation .watch, see what Bitcoin improvements the Bitcoin community, developers, and miners are considering, and show support by signaling from one of many BIPs up for consideration.
The Crypto Conversation
A highlight from Proof of Work - Marathon Digital Holdings
"Hi everyone, Andy Pickering here, I'm your host and welcome to the Crypto Conversation, a Brave New Coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future in the Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency space. Hey folks, we have a new sponsor here at the Crypto Conversation. Today's episode is brought to you by Coinsbee .com, the go -to platform for spending your crypto. With the biggest selection of brands across all gift card platforms and live in over 185 countries, Coinsbee supports the most relevant local brands for your everyday needs. They support more than 200 cryptocurrencies and offer a vast product range from gift cards, game points to mobile phone top -ups. Can't find what you're looking for? No worries, Coinsbee also offers Visa and Mastercard prepaid cards. So just go to Coinsbee .com and turn your digital assets into real -world possibilities. And now it is on with the show. My guest today is Fred Teel. Fred is the CEO at Marathon Digital Holdings, Marathon Digital Holdings, of course, one of the largest, most energy efficient and most technologically advanced Bitcoin mining companies on the face of the planet. Welcome to the show, Fred. Thank you. Great to be here. Great to have you here, Fred. Look, let's do what we do at the beginning of the show. It'd be great if you could please introduce yourself. I'd love to just hear a little bit about your professional story and what you've been doing that has led you to becoming CEO at Marathon. Sure. So, I'm the chairman and CEO at Marathon Digital Holdings. I've been in the technology industry for 40 years. First kind of job in technology was writing software for a bank in the city of London back in the late 70s, back in the days when we used punch cards to program computers and when the ledgers they used in banks were actually handwritten when you went into a teller to cash a check. I've worked pretty much in every aspect of technology, you know, large mainframes, super minis, PCs, I was very involved in the transition and building out of the internet and the data comms industry, a lot of experience in the semiconductor industry with data networking chips, ethernet technology, and then also as kind of the internet spread, internet of things and connecting devices to the internet, I took the company by the name of Lantronics Public in the year 2000 and then was very involved in the ad tech industry as well, ran a company called local .com, which is a publicly traded ad tech company, very involved in the search industry and basically have covered kind of enterprise software, every aspect of the industry. Did a bit of a right turn into the dark side of the capital side of the industry and managed a fund for private equity firm investing in enterprise software companies and also co -founded a venture firm investing in B2B SaaS companies.
The Crypto Conversation
A highlight from Spacemesh - Fairness through Proof of Space and Time
"Hi everyone, Andy Pickering here, I'm your host and welcome to the Crypto Conversation, a Brave New Coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future in the Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Hey folks, we have a new sponsor here at the Crypto Conversation, today's episode is brought to you by Coinsbee .com, the go -to platform for spending your crypto. With the biggest selection of brands across all gift card platforms and live in over 185 countries, Coinsbee supports the most relevant local brands for your everyday needs. They support more than 200 cryptocurrencies and offer a vast product range from gift cards, game points to mobile phone top -ups. Can't find what you're looking for? No worries. Coinsbee also offers Visa and Mastercard prepaid cards. So just go to Coinsbee .com and turn your digital assets into real -world possibilities. And now it is on with the show. My guest today is Tomer Affek. Tomer is the CEO and co -founder of SpaceMesh, a layer one proof of space -time protocol. Fascinating, I'm sure we'll learn all about this today. Tomer, welcome to the show Tomer. Hey, brilliant. Thanks for having me, happy to be here. Happy to have you here, Tomer. Let's do what we do at the beginning of the show. Be great if you could please introduce yourself, love to hear a little bit about who you are, your story and what you've been doing in the lead -up to co -founding SpaceMesh. Wow, yeah, so my career has, this is my third, I would say chapter. The first one was as a VC investor in a vehicle called Evergreen, that's a domestic VC out of Israel, been doing that for a decade and had the privilege of say, watching the industry morph from doing large bets, say $5 million bets after six months due diligence, into a whole different mode of operation where you invest sometimes even as small as half a million was two weeks of due diligence and industry, the speed, the mentality, the way they take decision, I've had the privilege of witnessing all that change. I've then left that to become an entrepreneur and entrepreneurship has been remarkably interesting. I've managed to sell my company and the whole experience as an entrepreneur from, you know, changing the company all the way to selling it has been really mind expanding. And the last job there began about five years ago when I could finally afford doing something with more passion and that was to become a, you know, blockchain entrepreneur or a builder in public and the past five years have been about creating what we call now the people's coin and that is the first little currency that everybody can mine from home using a home PC, not requiring any special equipment or any special knowledge and it was a very low and very, you know, demanding ride, but I'm very, very pleased with what we've managed to come up with. I think that we already have something like 30 ,000 concurrent miners on the network right now that and I think the protocol is extremely easy to mine and cost you nothing to attempt to mine. So I believe that, yeah, it will just grow and grow and grow over time and that's very, very exciting and also has the potential to become a more trustworthy money system that the people, everyday people at large use as a medium of exchange and not only as a store value. Yes, indeed. So, yeah, I believe the idea took home was originally you and your team were frustrated by, you know, once Bitcoin mining became industrialized and it was no longer really feasible for individuals to just try and mine a Bitcoin at home because they couldn't compete with the industrial mining farms and so the idea with SpaceMesh is to create something that you see as, as you said, the people's coin, something that is a bit more fair and equal and anyone who wants to can jump on board the network and start mining. Yeah, yeah, I think the Bitcoin originally had the same plan to be a magic internet money that everybody can join via mining from home. I think that vision went south when basically the mining industry got industrialized and now it's not feasible for a home miner to expect to be profitable mining Bitcoin from home and I think that Bitcoin lost something when it lost that ability and money system needs to remain open, it needs to remain such that it is free from capture and from some, you know, oligarchy or elite minority that is now calling the shots on everybody so basically the way to avoid it is to have a money system that is always open to a new joiner from the wild. I think multiple things are novel and unique in SpaceMesh and makes them, you know, makes SpaceMesh worthy of a contender to the people coin, one of which is the fact that you can mine it at ease, not requiring any special equipment or any higher knowledge or anything of that nature. The other thing is the fairness towards the smaller miners, meaning that unlike in Bitcoin, the smallest miner, meaning the one that uses the minimum hardware requirement, is guaranteed to be treated as fairly and as, you know, paid as frequently and on the same basis as something like a whale and yes, this is why I think that more and more people will join SpaceMesh over time and I cannot see why it won't have something like beyond a million miners in a reasonable time period and that would be again substantially more, two orders of magnitude more than any other cryptocurrency in the history to date. Sure, I can see Toma that you guys, you launched Mainnet launch of the protocol 14th of July, so not that long ago. How long were you working on this before Mainnet launch? The idea began to be discussed in 2017.
Bankless
A highlight from 185 - The Superchain Explained with Jesse Pollock & Ben Jones
"But Ben, you just introduced a newer structure, which seems to be a composition of many chains. And you called that a super chain. Okay, so super chain. How does the super chain idea tie to what Jesse was saying earlier of getting a billion people on chain? Like how important is this structural element? Will they all come through independent chains? Like just paint the picture of how this new structure will impact the future here. Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, how to front -run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. We have two guests on today, and there's two parts to this episode. The first part, we're talking about base. And the second, we talk about the super chain. What is base? Base is Coinbase's layer two. We talked to Jesse, the creator of base, about how the launch went. This is now two weeks, I think, something like that, from the launch of base. There's almost a million users already, and there's more transactions per second on base than the Ethereum mainnet. This chain was, of course, built using Optimism's tech stack, and we think this is one chain of many thousands of layer two chains that we'll see in the coming years. And so how do we tie all of these things together? We have Ben Jones on, who is a co -founder of Optimism, to discuss that. That is the second part of this episode where we discuss the super chain. This seems to be the key to how we bring on a billion people on chain. First, we talk about the law of chains, which is a constitution for uniting layer two chains. That's the social layer of the super chain. The second part, we get into the technical. Chain hopping today is very clunky. It's kind of painful, feels like a border crossing. How do we make all of this feel like one chain? Finally, we end with the question of fraud proofs. How decentralized is the Optimism tech stack today? Can Coinbase go into your funds from base? We don't have fault proofs yet. When are they coming? We discussed that with the two guests. I think one theme throughout this episode is it's becoming clear that Ethereum is more than just a digital nation. It's a substrate for building networks of digital nations. And this, for me, was the most interesting part of the episode. David, why is this episode significant to you? I think the super chain is so cool. I think it's really emblematic of what brought you and me and so many others in the Bankless nation into crypto. The conversation of the super chain is one that is about crypto economics. It's about political philosophy. It's about coordination and the relationship between the individual and the collective. I think a lot of the subject matter that we have explored here on Bankless is all being comprised in this super chain conversation. It's not just about the technical hurdles that come with wanting to allow for 10 ,000 chains to blossom and then figuring out how to blur the lines, the boundaries between 10 ,000 chains to make them seem like one seamless super chain. It's also about the coordination incentives of people joining a digital collective. How do we actually convince people to come into the fold? How do we incentivize coordination rather than defection? How do we get large centralized institutions like Coinbase to cooperate and to coordinate with decentralized DAOs? I think this is what we've been training for, quote unquote, Ryan, when it comes to exploring so many different facets of what makes crypto crypto. And this is why the optimism super chain conversation and really the whole entire optimism endeavor has always resonated very, very deeply with me. This is one of the, I think, most important conversations that we've had in a long time and perhaps will have if the optimism vision does manifest, especially the super chain vision, which is being validated by Coinbase and base. I think this is the substrate for change in the whole entire world. And so that's why you can just hear the excitement coming out of me right now. Yeah, I think the whole time for me, I was like, I can't wait to get to the debrief because I want to discuss this. Like a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head that I want to talk to you. And of course, the debrief is the episode that we do and record right after the episode that is available for bankless citizens on the bankless premium RSS feed. You can access that now. David, I want to talk to you on that episode about this idea of the super chain, the united chains of optimism that we're creating here. How will other layer twos respond? Will they have their own united chains? I think so. A lot to discuss there. And before we get to the episode, first, we disclose both David and I are long term layer two bulls. You know that, you know, we hold ETH as well. We're also advisors to optimism. We're long term investors. We're not journalists. We don't do paid content. There's a link to all bankless disclosures in the show notes at all times. Guys, we're getting right to the conversation with Ben and Jesse. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including our number one recommended crypto exchange, Kraken. Go check him out. Kraken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry. The place I use to check the charts and the crypto prices, even when I'm not looking to place a trade. On Kraken Pro, you'll have access to advanced charting tools, real time market data and lightning fast trade execution. All inside their spiffy new modular interface. Kraken's new customizable modular layout lets you tailor your trading experience to suit your needs. Pick and choose your favorite modules and place them anywhere you want in your screen. With Kraken Pro, you have that power. Whether you are a seasoned pro or just starting out, join thousands of traders who trust Kraken Pro for their crypto trading needs. Visit pro .kraken .com to get started today. Are you a MetaMask user? Well, you're listening to Bankless, so of course you are. The wallet you know and love just got a whole lot better. MetaMask Portfolio is the ultimate one stop shop for all of your crypto needs. It gives you a holistic view of your crypto portfolio across multiple chains and multiple addresses all at once. You can easily view and manage all your coins, tokens and NFTs in one convenient place just by connecting your wallet. MetaMask Portfolio goes beyond just viewing your portfolio, though. Inside the portfolio, you can do all the incredible money verbs that make DeFi so powerful. You can buy, swap, bridge and stake your crypto assets with ease. It's like having a powerful battle station for all your DeFi moves right at your fingertips. So if you're looking to do more in Web3 your way, MetaMask Portfolio is the answer. I already know that you have MetaMask wallet, so go check out your MetaMask Portfolio. Learn more at metamask .io slash portfolio.
The Crypto Conversation
A highlight from Pocket Network - Pioneering the DePin revolution
"Hi everyone, Andy Pickering here, I'm your host and welcome to the Crypto Conversation, a Brave New Coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future in the Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Hey folks, we have a new sponsor here at the Crypto Conversation. Today's episode is brought to you by coinsbe .com, the go -to platform for spending your crypto. With the biggest selection of brands across all gift card platforms and live in over 185 countries, Coinsbe supports the most relevant local brands for your everyday needs. They support more than 200 cryptocurrencies and offer a vast product range from gift cards, game points to mobile phone top -ups. Can't find what you're looking for? No worries, Coinsbe also offers Visa and Mastercard prepaid cards. So just go to coinsbe .com and turn your digital assets into real -world possibilities. And now it is on with the show. My guest today is Dermot O 'Royden. Dermot is the director of the Pocket Network Foundation and well, this is all about Deepin. that's I think how we say it, Deepin, decentralized physical infrastructures, which I'm not super aware of actually. So it's going to be fascinating to learn all about this. Welcome to the show, Dermot. Hey Andy, thanks for having me on. It is a pleasure, Dermot. Let's do what we do at the beginning of the show just before we dive into Deepin. Could you please introduce yourself? I'd love to hear a little bit about who you are, your backstory and what led you here. Great. Yeah, sure. So I guess I'm really a bit of a generalist at heart and I guess I've kind of worn many different kind of hats my last kind of 10 plus years or so working in the technology industry. And yeah, I guess it's kind of more of an aside, but interesting to see so many different people in the crypto space seem to come from so many different backgrounds, wearing so many different hats, but we all seem to be kind of aligned by similar values and drawn to different aspects of the space that really kind of calls, I guess, to kind of our own kind of, I guess, personal kind of values and then things that we want to see different in the world. And yeah, I guess for me, I've been a startup operator in Dublin and in London, I have actually also been a lawyer advising, again, startups at the earliest stages from raising first round checks of kind of 50 to 100K to kind of later stage unicorn rounds, also advising some of the bigger name European and global VCs as they're also backing some of these high -grant founders and their startup teams. And I guess throughout this whole period, but before joining crypto in 2017 and after it, I've been involved in various communities that are helping startups, founders really come together and deliver value and way beyond just the idea of kind of transactional networking really of how do we coordinate better, how do we support each other, how do we work together to deliver something that's more impactful and beneficial. And before getting into what I'm doing now, yeah, I guess for the last, since early 2020 until the start of last year, I was a partner at a VC fund whose mission was to back the builders of the new open internet. So they were a $30 million seed fund investing solely into crypto and web3 and that actual focus at EdenBlock was purely on infrastructure and infrastructure as we defined it quite broadly was team solving problems. There's a lot of cool things happening in the crypto space. But for us, a great filter was just, there's a lot of cool things that could happen in the future as well, but really is like, what is the problem? What are you solving? And for us, that was backing teams that are solving these core problems because we saw them as some of the kind of key headwinds blocking some of the progress in the space. And that was data infrastructure that we might get into as part of today's conversation. So teams like Viconomy making it easier for people to interact and improve the UX of the crypto layer. Teams like Jensen, which is very much a deep hidden team in the space who are aggregating GPU compute to actually improve scale and lower cost for training up machine learning training models, pocket network, which I'm a partner and a part of as a direct director on the, on the foundation, which again is using a blockchain to really just do something much better than you can otherwise do. And that is actually to deliver the most reliable performance and cost effective access to open data. And I guess maybe that will put a pin on that in terms of deep in and we come back to, but yeah, so kind of really just thinking about these teams, solving these core problems. And I joined the pocket network foundation at the start of this year, but I guess two key reasons, really one I'm incredibly passionate and motivated by their mission. I think if you believe that the value that resides on blockchain and these kind of open rails are going to get more and more valuable over time, I think how we access and interact with that layer is going to get more and more important and it's, it should be a fundamental importance for all of that. So making that as reliable performance and cost effective to everyone, I think is a mission I think a lot of people can get behind of and I'm, I'm certainly, I'm proud to be part of pocket helping drive that. And secondly, I guess that kind of goes back to kind of, I guess what kind of pulls me in and what kind of excites me about technology. It's like technology is this amazing lever for good, but actually it really does need to improve and create positive impact for humankind and what we do every day too. And actually really at the heart of pocket strategy and actually how it does what it does better than you could otherwise do without it's kind of a it's blockchain and everything else that's part of its network is actually to harness the power of its community. And that has been a thread that's always been really exciting for me of how do we coordinate better over the internet. And that started with the kind of broader naive day back in 2016 was kind of the light bulb moment for me back to everything we've been doing since I still don't think we're here, but I think a lot of the things that we're doing in crypto kind of shows the path and gives us some of the answers of the way forward of how we can do, how we can coordinate much better as humans leveraging blockchain rails to deliver something that's so much more impactful and better for all of us.
The Crypto Conversation
A highlight from The Comeback Kid - Can EOS Return to Glory?
"Hi everyone, Andy Pickering here, I'm your host and welcome to the Crypto Conversation, a Brave New Coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future in the Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency space. Hey folks, we have a new sponsor here at the Crypto Conversation. Today's episode is brought to you by Coinsbee .com, the go -to platform for spending your crypto. With the biggest selection of brands across all gift card platforms and live in over 185 countries, Coinsbee supports the most relevant local brands for your everyday needs. They support more than 200 cryptocurrencies and offer a vast product range from gift cards, game points to mobile phone top -ups. Can't find what you're looking for? No worries, Coinsbee also offers Visa and Mastercard prepaid cards. So just go to Coinsbee .com and turn your digital assets into real -world possibilities. And now it is on with the show. My guest today is Yves Larose. Yves is the CEO of the EOS Foundation and well, we're going to learn a whole lot of stuff about the state of EOS, where it is all at today, and I think there's no better person to talk to to learn about all this than Yves himself. Welcome to the show, Yves. Welcome. Thank you for having me on, Andy. I'm looking forward to talk about EOS today. Yeah, me too. So look, to begin with, Yves, I suppose let's do what we do at the beginning of the show and I'll invite you to please introduce yourself. I'd love to just hear a little bit about your personal story and what led you to really, I suppose, getting involved with EOS and becoming CEO of the foundation. Sure. I got into blockchain really early on, very shortly after the Bitcoin whitepaper, so many, many years ago, and I kind of fell out of touch with the space. I was mining. I was mining Bitcoin at the time, and when the ASICs miners were rumoured to come about, they weren't out yet, people were able to pre -order them, they were delayed for people receiving them, but at that time, I just saw a shift happen whereby individuals would no longer really be able to be involved in the way that they had before, and that kind of decentralization aspect to it was I was seeing was going to be removed as you'd have these mega mining farms come about, and that's really when I got out of this space, but I came back in around 2016 and then really jumped in 2017, and that's when I came back in full -time essentially, and I launched a block producer on EOS. That's what attracted my attention at first. It was the EOS blockchain, generation three, letter one blockchains, promising scalability, promising this idea of mass adoption, that the technology was now ready to be able to be used, and that's really what attracted me to EOS in the first place, and that's what got me back into the space originally was this idea that people again would be able to be participants in the network in meaningful ways as kind of that promise originally that attracted me all the way back in 2009. Very good, thank you, Eve, and I remember back in those days, I guess 2017, 2018, which is around about where I began to take an interest in what was happening in the crypto markets, many listeners I'm sure will have a familiar story, and obviously the ICO boom was happening at the time, and of course, EOS actually was, I believe, one of, if not the largest ICOs of that time. I think they raised over 4 billion in the biggest initial coin offering of its era, and 4 billion, obviously, a staggering amount of money. Now, look, at the time, EOS was kind of riding high as this competitive Ethereum and had this reputation as Ethereum on steroids. I suppose that's why there was so much interest in the ICO and why so many people were fans of the platform and its promise. Now, this is a long time ago, Eve, of course, and a lot has happened since then. And if I'm honest, I'm only very vaguely aware of kind of the political machinations that have taken place since then, but that's really why you're here to kind of bring us up to date with what has gone on. And I suppose even more importantly, what is happening now, because while some people may have just assumed that EOS had kind of faded away and was a dead coin, a dead community, nothing much happening, that is not actually the case. So I don't know if that's kind of the context from me. Where do you want to jump in and begin to just start to bring people up to date, Eve? Sure. I mean, I'm sure a lot of your listeners and a lot of people out there in general echo the sentiment that you just shared. They know of the ICO. They know 2017, 2018, crazy years for crypto. And then they know of kind of the fade out and they don't know anything since. So I think addressing that and actually talking about that is a good starting point. So you're right. The ICO was the largest ICO. It's still to this date the largest ICO, and it attracted a lot of people in the crypto space at the time. If you go back and ask, the majority of people had heard of EOS, many of them had participated in the ICO for EOS, and there was a lot of expectations on what EOS would do. It was one of the first, if not the first generation three layer one blockchains. It was promising scalability, and there was some heavy hitters behind it in terms of the tech and what they'd be able to accomplish. And that clearly played a role in its early success. And I think a big part of it as well was that the founders at the time, with the money that they were raising and the money that they had raised by then, they were committing a significant portion. The majority of it back into the ecosystem in terms of investments. And we look at that now in 2023, many of the later coins that launched were backed by VCs or were backed by some prominent firms. And they were part of that model of reinvesting into developing the ecosystem itself when the network launch is pretty bare. There's very little tools, very little applications, but this concept of having a body that can redeploy capital to accelerate that early growth for those components that we know are required or at least are helpful to generate and to create and nurture an ecosystem. Having that external capital that's promised, that's committed to it is a key point of that. And unfortunately for EOS, that did not happen. So the money from the ICO race did not go to the ICO community. It was left in the hands of a private entity. And that private entity did not reinvest. And so you essentially have this community that was somewhat at the loss because they had all these expectations on their shoulders. They didn't have any capital. They didn't really have a means of assembling themselves. And the coin and the rest of the market essentially kind of caught up to it. And so you had a really a period of about two and a half, three years or so where EOS was very similar to what you're saying, where it was in a way a dead coin or a dead community. There were clearly some people still there. I was there throughout and there were others there as well. But in general, compared to the hype, compared to the fanfare of 2017, 2018, a lot of that had gone away. And a big part of that, like I mentioned, is just due to the lack of resources. You have this community, these developers that essentially gave all of their money up in the ICO and thought that there would be this idea of a centralized body that would be able to redeploy that capital, but in more effective ways. And that never materialized. So not only do they not have any capital, they don't have any means to be able to go get that capital back. And that period of time was very, very difficult at a time where competitors are also coming up and they're catching up on the tech advances that EOS had at the very beginning, although EOS still remains the fastest, most scalable blockchain. There are other components to make a thriving ecosystem that are as important, if not more important, and we're not present during that period of time. That's right. And so even be useful, then, you talked about the, I suppose, the entity that organized and ran the ICO. And as I understand it, that was block one, which at one time, if not founded or headed, Brock Pierce is the personality that people will remember as being associated with block one. So if block one has essentially acquired 4 billion in capital from the EOS ICO race, and you say that they said the intention was to over time reinvest that back into the ecosystem in a smart and sustainable way, but it seems like that didn't happen. So maybe you can give us your perspective on what block one instead did and where they are today, just as context before we come back to where EOS is at. This will be interesting. So I really can't comment on where they are today. What I do know is that if you wake up one morning, you suddenly have $4 billion. I would imagine that it likely changes what you imagine you're going to do when you wake up in the morning going forward. And as much as you may have said that you were going to commit and or had made promises of recommitting those funds, once you're sitting on that treasury, things become very real and things become very different. So I don't know what changed internally as to why they would not follow through on that, because I think they had this massive community behind them. They had an amazing product that they have built. Really, the sky was the limit for them. So why didn't they continue? That's a really good question that they'll have to answer. There's currently a class action lawsuit that has been ongoing for years that they're attempting to settle. There are a few other options out there on the table for EOS token holders, but essentially the founders of block one said one thing and they ultimately ended up doing something else. And the EOS community leveraging the tool itself, leveraging the blockchain itself, have rallied together. And since the formation of the ENF and even prior to that, essentially been taking steps to hold block one to account because as much as this is new, uncharted territory that the space itself is quite nascent, accountability still remains par for the course. And when entities such as this raise that amount of capital, there does come certain responsibilities attached to that, regardless of whether you have a written contract or not. Your words, what you say, what you do in order to accumulate that capital definitely matters a lot in the long term. And so as much as we don't know why they didn't do what they said they were going to do, the community is trying to hold them to account to make sure that this never happens to anybody else again. And would you say as block one, as Brock Pierce, are they still generally perhaps from a distance supportive of EOS and its vision, its community and its token, or are they trying to pretend that they were never around? I think it's somewhere in between. I wouldn't say that they're supportive. I would say that for a long time now, for a period of time, they would say that they were supportive, but the actions really didn't match the words and that expanded for quite some time. And once it became very apparent where as much as you want to at some point, it could be subjective that they were supporting, but at some point it became very tangible that they were not. In large part, that's where the GitHub repository account comes in because it became very clear that there was no longer any commits to it. It was night and day. It was on or off. You can't really hide from that. Outside of that, though, in terms of support, we've heard a lot of, you know, soon, it's coming soon. We'll do this. We'll do that. And it never came. And so when the community took matters in its own hands, they essentially fired block one. They essentially, and there's a lot of shenanigans that went around that time as well between Brock and block one because Brock had left Brock one at the time. A lot of shenanigans on trying to take some of the tokens that were still on chain to allocate them to Brock and block one did not own those tokens, so they weren't in their rights to be able to do so. But that was very early on in the years of ENF when the ENF essentially fired block one and made sure that those tokens would not, again, go into the hands of known entities that clearly didn't have Yoss's best interests at heart. But where they are today, what they're doing, you know, your guess is as good as mine. And look, it's a problem or a story that we've seen told time and time again in the crypto space, Eve. And it really speaks to, I suppose, you know, philosophically the weakness of humans, if you like, who were susceptible to greed and pride and you name any kind of human emotion. And on one sense, you know, that is the ethos of blockchain is kind of exists to try and take some of those problems out of the picture. But it's just early, early, early, messy days and we're not quite there yet. Correct. Yes, I think you're right on that. It's funny how if you go back to 2009, part of why Bitcoin wouldn't say it was invented, there are multiple reasons why that kind of came about or their theories in a way. But definitely at that time, if you go back to the 2008 crash, you go 2009, the 99 % versus 1%, a big part of this underlying technology and communities coming together was to take the power back from greedy corporations. And essentially EOS, again, kind of becomes that emblem, that beacon for what happens when corporate greed takes over. But as well, at the same time, when the EOS community took over, launched the ENF and essentially fired block one that also gave a lot of hope as to what this tool, this power, that this technology can do in the hands of the people where people can actually take things back, take the power back in a way that isn't necessarily possible in our traditional space because everything on blockchain makes it a little bit easier to organize, a little bit easier to kind of remove that layer of trust to find out whether or not people are token holders, whether or not they do have skin in the game. The tool itself, the technology itself is quite key for us to be able to take this back and to lead it forward, essentially. And that's something that would not have been traditionally, I'm not saying easy to do, I'm not even sure if it would have been possible to do in a traditional space. And so blockchain, very nascent, very new, but we're already starting to see what you can do with the tool, the underlying tool outside of the tokens, outside of the other use cases. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Eve, let's learn a little bit more about the EOS Network Foundation then, which is obviously close to your heart. I think you're the CEO. So, I mean, obviously, I guess we understand that the role of the foundation is to protect the interests of the EOS community and the EOS network and try and advance the network technologically and philosophically. But yeah, just expand on that and tell us what your work involves and what your goals are. Sure. So when the foundation was launched, one of the things that it was trying to address was that looking at other blockchains, especially the layer ones, big ecosystems, they have this centralized body that helps coordinate the flow of information. But it's essentially somewhat of a steward or a shepherd for the network. In our case, because the ENF wasn't created upon launch, it's, I believe, the only foundation that was appointed and created by the community years after the network launch. We created accountability mechanisms within the foundation and in the way that it receives the funding and the way that it essentially deploys that capital. And ultimately, what it was created to do was to fill that gap, to fill that void of having an entity that had a larger sums of capital that could coordinate on the behalf of the network, for example, with exchanges or with government bodies, with regulators, that type of thing. So when the regulators or when an exchange, they want to talk to one body, they want to talk to one person. When you have a network that's decentralized, just like EOS or like Ethereum, like Bitcoin, which nodes do you talk to? Which one, you know, who represents the network? That's why foundations are quite key. And so that was one of our primary goals. And since then, what we've been able to do, I mean, a big part of the job of ENF is really to reach out to the stakeholders, to the token holders, to the application developers, to the business operating on the network and find out what are they doing? What are they using the product for? And what are they needing? What's not there yet? Or what are the trends? What's coming along? And so it's this share of information, this constant input into the ENF of information and output in terms of that capital deployment, in terms of tools, et cetera, protocol features. And this is really at the core of what we started off doing when we created. And since there, in the last two years, then it's expanded to obviously have more functions outside of this. But generally at the base, that's what it is. It really is to enable businesses, developers and individuals to build on the EOS network. Yeah. And I understand then I've seen the EOS Network Foundation, you've announced a major consensus upgrade Antelope Leap 5 .0, which I believe is scheduled for launch Q4 this year. So Antelope Leap, Yves, what was involved here? Sure. So part of the ENF coming in was also that rebrand. So if we go back to this topic or the subject of Block .1 and the dead years of the EOS for a period of time, one of the things that the EOS community didn't even have was access to its own repo. So the code repo belonged to Block .1, all the assets, the icons, et cetera, all belong to Block .1. And so what the community did and what I led alongside other chains that are also using the same underlying software stack is we created Antelope. We essentially took over the code repo, added functionality to it, cleaned up a lot of what was left standing over the last remaining years prior to that, and we created Antelope. It's essentially the software stack that used to be EOSIO, was rebranded to Antelope, a lot of new features and a lot of new functions within it. So that's the base Antelope. Now with Antelope, because now we're the owners of the community, essentially it's open source, so there's no owner, but in a way we're the owners of the software, we're the maintainers, the developers, we've committed to and we've been withholding that commitment from the very beginning where we typically do a spring release that is a little bit easier. Not everybody needs to upgrade it, add some functionality, some speed, some really cool features to the software stack, and every fall or so we do breaking changes. We do consensus upgrades. And the next one coming up that you just mentioned, Leap 5 .0, it's our latest consensus upgrade that we'll be doing. We did one last September, September, October of last year. This one is quite big because this one will fundamentally change the consensus algorithm at the base of EOS, whereas right now it's DPOS, it's Delegated Proof of Stake. This will move it to something that's more in line with what Hot Stuff is, and the Hot Stuff was used by Facebook for their Libra project that never ended up launching. But that consensus algorithm is very powerful, and that's what we're switching to, and that'll open up a whole new world of possibilities in the way that consensus is currently reached on EOS, splitting that up within multiple roles if we want to, and then adding a number of validators that's just not currently possible at the same time of reducing finality that currently stands at around 180 seconds, so about three minutes, down to within a few seconds, between one to four seconds or so. So it's a major technological upgrade that's coming up, but also opens the door to governance change possibilities in the future as well. Hey, very nicely said, Yves. Look, it sounds great. What would you say to anyone in the EOS community? I'm sure the real community stalwarts, if you like, are probably deep in the weeds already, and they know all this stuff, but maybe for people who aren't quite up to speed with where the project is at, maybe they had some EOS tokens back in the day. Maybe they're still holding some, hoping for a revival, or for people listening to this and they're trying to get a sense of, man, this sounds good. Can Yves bring EOS back from, I don't know where you are on the market cap table, but from, as a top 10 coin, can you make it back to the top 10? Just give us a sense of where you'd like to take EOS again and what people should look for. That's a good segue. I mean, we used to be top 10, we're currently roughly, we flow between 40s and 50s, but the goal is definitely to be back into the top 10. And that's a huge challenge. Nobody's ever been able to pull that off as far as we know. And so if you do have EOS tokens, or if you're interested in the EOS blockchain, there's definitely a lot of activity going on. There's a lot of progress, a lot of applications developing, a lot of applications migrating over from other chains onto EOS. And that original dream that we had with EOS, or that I know part of what sold me to EOS was this idea of scalability, this idea of mass adoption. And in the space in general, as a whole right now, we've not really seen anything that can be considered mass adoption. And this is where EOS really shines. And with the functions that we're adding at the end of the year, we're still pushing towards that. So this idea is that EOS was always the most scalable, the most powerful, the fastest, most reliable blockchain. That was the goal. That still remains the case. And to this date, it still is the only blockchain that's ever accomplished more than 100 million transactions per day, consistent for months on end. 124, 125 was our peak. Putting that in perspective, that was more every single day than Bitcoin and Ethereum for an entire year. So EOS is really made, and to this date, that's still the case, added an extremely cheap or very low cost all while being reliable. So the network hasn't gone down and it's essentially been 100 % uptime since June 2018. So that's five years and counting. Part of what is attracting or what we're positioning ourselves for is we believe that at some point there's going to be another bull market. And at some point there's going to be an application or a type of application or some kind of a use case that is going to open the floodgates onto crypto from mainstream stakeholders. And they'll need a home where they are, and developers will need a home where they can deploy their applications and everybody can actually start leveraging using this technology. And very few people are capable of doing that. Very few networks will be able to host that. And we're still working towards being able to do that. And it's a huge challenge. So to be able to process hundreds of millions of transactions per day reliably at a marginal, basically low cost, negligible cost is a huge, huge, huge feat. So everything we do, we've been continuing down that path, positioning ourselves for when that moment comes. We got a glimpse of this with GameFi last year with some play to earn games. We started seeing volume that was much higher than normal from regular adoption. Now we've seen that died out again with the current bear, but we're hoping to see that and more come back out again with the next bull. And yes, we'll be ready for it.
The Crypto Conversation
A highlight from Monad - Superscalar Pipelining for the EVM
"Hi everyone, Andy Pickering here, I'm your host and welcome to the Crypto Conversation, a Brave New Coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future in the Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Hey folks, we have a new sponsor here at the Crypto Conversation. Today's episode is brought to you by coinsbe .com, the go -to platform for spending your crypto. With the biggest selection of brands across all gift card platforms and live in over 185 countries, Coinsbe supports the most relevant local brands for your everyday needs. They support more than gift cards and game points to mobile phone top -ups. Can't find what you're looking for? No worries, Coinsbe also offers Visa and Mastercard prepaid cards. So just go to coinsbe .com and turn your digital assets into real -world possibilities. And now it is on with the show. My guest today is an incredible layer one that can process, I believe, 10 ,000 transactions per second. A reasonably impressive welcome to the show, Keone. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Andy. Hey, it is a pleasure. Let's do what we do at the beginning of the show, Keone. It'd be great if you could please introduce yourself. I'd love to hear just a little bit about your professional backstory and your journey because I've had luck. It's an interesting one and I think it probably informs what you're doing now. So yeah, let's jump in. Please go ahead. Sure thing. My name is Keone. After college, I worked in the high -frequency trading industry for about 10 years. And I guess more specifically, I worked at a company called Jump Trading for about eight years before starting Monad with two other co -founders. I was on the HFT side, so doing a mix of machine learning and price prediction and building high -performance trading systems, which was definitely somewhat relevant to the work that we do at Monad now. We're building really high -performance EVM execution system and then building that into a new layer one. But yeah, I'm happy to dig in more if you're curious or just talk more about Monad or anything else that you'd like to chat about. Yeah, well, I think we'll do all of the above, Keone, but let's start at Jump. I mean, anyone that is reasonably serious about crypto trading or spends too much time on crypto Twitter even, they will be familiar with Jump Trading as a brand. So to start with, maybe just be fun to get some general reflections of your time at Jump and then perhaps I'm sure some of those experiences have informed the origin story for Monad or what you're trying to achieve with Monad, right? Certainly. I joined Jump in the end of 2013. Jump Trading is a company that is pretty successful in the algorithmic trading space, almost just all systematic trading, writing programs that take market data and convert that into price predictions and then convert that into a set of orders to be sent to the market. My team specifically was focused on futures trading and without disclosing the exact numbers, I would say we're definitely a major player in a number of different markets. And that was a good experience because these are very competitive markets. There's a bunch of exchanges and probably thousands of different products and anyone can set up a server near the exchange and start parsing market data and then figure out how to send orders and come up with better strategies. So it is kind of a competitive space where you're competing both to predict very accurately and then ties between predictions are broken by who can be the fastest. So there's definitely a competitive pressure that is pushing everyone toward being really, really performant on the order of microseconds. So it was a good experience, learned a lot, worked with a pretty small team, about 10 people. We were responsible for building the entire trading stack and that was a good experience for just working in a small team to build something I think fairly ambitious. And I saw a Qioni that just recently you tweeted, I'm not sure what it was called, but you tweeted about a recent high frequency trading study or thesis. You're familiar with what I'm referencing and maybe just run us through your comments on that because I think you thought it was quite an interesting thesis, but it didn't necessarily prove its conclusion one way or the other, I think you said. Oh, sure. I think I just tweeted that all academic papers about high frequency trading are incorrect. And then people were commenting and saying the obvious comment, which is like, well, of course, no one would publish anything that works because if they did, there would not be an incentive to publish. And I think that's a fair statement, but I think it also goes a little bit beyond that, which is that it's also really hard to know whether something is going to work And upfront. there's a lot of assumptions that one frequently makes when doing an academic study, like you assume that there's a certain cost of execution or your trades will have a certain amount of slippage or market impact. You have to make assumptions about fees. You have to make assumptions about latencies. And there's a lot of stuff in there that has a huge effect on the actual expected value of one of these strategies. And the margin for error is just very, very low because for strategies that have pretty high turnover, the expected value in, say, in basis points of each trade is just minuscule, single digit basis points or less. So if you have something that is biased, like an assumption about latency that's wrong, and then that could have a massive effect on whether that strategy is actually profitable. So I think the more meta comment that I have is just that because these strategies are so sensitive, the only way to really know is to go out there and do it and build the actual strategy, build the actual prediction stack and the actual mechanical thing that goes out and does the thing that your idea is and then see if it's profitable. And there's a lot of things that we would simulate that look profitable, but then when you run it, it just wasn't. So not to say it's totally trial and error, but it's more like there's a lot of ways to be tripped up and to take a negative result and have it seem positive in simulation. So having a lot of academic papers, it's really that won't probably actually work. Yeah. You've got to have skin in the game. You've got to be the man in the arena. You've got to be testing it in a real world adversarial conditions. That's what trading is, Keone. Well, you know that better than most. And look, if that's the case, why you're part of this, let's say, you're part of an elite high -frequency trading team at JuMP that look, there's a lot of pressure to be performant, as you said, but I'm sure it's professionally fulfilling as well. It would be intense, but good times. What made you decide that you're going to move on from that kind of environment and kind of put yourself even more so to be the man in the arena or the small team back in the arena, trying to essentially spin up a new kind of startup, zero to one, go through that whole headache again and try and build a new high -performance blockchain, I suppose. What fostered, what was the beginning of that decision? Yeah, I think there are a couple of major factors. One is that although our team had a lot of success over the years in building really performance systems, it is somewhat of a situation of marginal returns where you're putting in a ton of effort to make a very small latency improvement, tweaking things very slightly, which might require a ton of reorganization, re -architecture of the system just to make a tiny change. And then as time goes on, that just becomes even more and more extreme. So I think that's a first factor is just seeing that over time, it really is a race to zero. And at some point, you should probably exit a race that is a race to zero. But I think another thing is that we were just doing work that was very proprietary, pushing to a GitHub repo that 10 people had access to. And we were using open source tools in some cases and excited about open source development, building in the open, building for a much broader set of people. And then as our team became more familiar with crypto, and particularly as my co -founder James and I became more aware of DeFi and the idea of when people can build new things on top of existing things, that became very exciting. And it was very clear also that there was still a very big need to deliver much more performance systems specifically for the Ethereum virtual machine compared to what existed at the time and continues to not exist right now. So I think it's a confluence of a couple of different factors. But at the end of the day, for any startup, you need an idea that you have very high conviction in where you feel it's something that's really needed. The market is demanding it. And also that you have relevant skills where you're capable of tackling that. If anyone is capable of it, we felt that we were. So all of those things together really made it a good fit. Well, tell us a little bit more about why you think that is or what that means then at Kioni. So you described Monad as an ultra high performance EVM blockchain that potentially 1000x is the throughput of Ethereum. I don't know if that comes from a press release or your website or somewhere, but that is in my notes. Look, we do hear that kind of marketing copy. I don't know, people say this all the time. Some people can deliver and some can't. I'm not saying I doubt your claims, but just tell us a little bit about why you and your team are the team to pull this off. Right. Yeah. I think the backdrop of all of this is that the Ethereum virtual machine by code standard is similar to JavaScript in the early 2000s where it's kind of had become the dominant standard. A lot of people were building applications and libraries there, but the actual performance of JavaScript was really quite poor. And we're in the same environment now where almost all apps are built for EVM. They're built in Solidity or in some limited cases in Viper or Huff, which are other high level languages that compile the EVM byte code. But the actual systems are just not that performant. And I think a lot of the... There's a lot of interesting research going on in the space, but a lot of it is in other directions, like thinking about how to scale rollups, research into zero knowledge proofs, research into shared sequencers, research into restaking. And we think we're excited about all those verticals as well in the Ethereum space, but no one is doing what we're doing, which is rebuilding the EVM execution stack from the ground up. And I guess that might sound surprising, but that's just the state of the world right now. What really needs to be done is the systems need to introduce pipelining into many different areas of execution, pipelining at the transaction level so that transactions can be run in parallel when transactions don't collide with each other. Additionally, there needs to be pipelining at the state access layer, which is how whenever a smart contract is run, it almost always depends on some state associated with that smart contract. That means a disk read. And then after the transaction completes, it's a disk write. So that state access is really inefficient right now because it's sequential manner. And then there also needs to be pipelining between execution and consensus. So I can describe that a little bit more, but I think at a high level, pipelining is the act of trying to utilize all of the resources of the system efficiently by doing work in parallel and scheduling work appropriately. And existing systems really don't have this notion of and that's a lot of what we do at Monad is introducing pipelining to the Ethereum virtual machine so that it can be a lot more performant, so that we can go from 10 transactions per second to 10 ,000 transactions per second. Yeah, so I mean, we're getting a little bit technical, Keone, which is absolutely fine. So when you use the term pipelining, we've talked about or people will be familiar with the various different methods, I suppose, that different builders across the Ethereum community, different paths that people are taking, rollups, sidechains, sharding, et cetera, et cetera. So are you kind of saying that pipelining is the path that you and your team have are pursuing and that this is potentially a different solution and maybe a better solution to achieve those kind of transaction speeds? Right. I think it's definitely a completely different vertical in the overall Ethereum scaling landscape. And we're excited about a lot of the other verticals as well, but progress requires focus and our team is sort of uniquely positioned to address this specific vertical, given our previous background in building high performance execution systems. Whereas other teams that maybe have a lot of cryptography knowledge or have a lot of knowledge with building proving systems, they might be more suited towards some of the other directions. So I think overall, just there's a lot of different efforts going on that are going to scale Ethereum in different ways. And some of these are composable with each other as well. For example, in the roll up space, the idea of a roll up is that it's moving execution off of the main chain onto a separate blockchain, which then has a mechanism to commit data and commit effectively checkpoints of the execution back to the main chain and thus scale Ethereum by moving some of the work off chain and then just committing like a cheaper thing back on chain. So that's a scaling effort that's going on and everyone knows about optimism and Arbitrum and other base, for example, Coinbase's roll up. And this is one direction, but then a completely orthogonal thing to that is making the individual node that runs those roll ups really perform it and making it able to execute because at some point the roll up actually runs into a bottleneck of not being able to execute more than a certain number of transactions and they could try to throw more hardware at it. But at the end of the day, there's still limitations. So that's actually a situation where the work that we're doing in Monad of building execution systems that are really performant could potentially meld really well with some of these orthogonal scaling efforts. Yeah, very nice, Keoni. And I understand you have a recent grant program that you announced and there's a number of verticals involved in that. So maybe just update us on what you're trying to achieve with those grants. Sure. We're excited about supporting like at the So it's just a developer platform and the mission is to help developers build apps productively and reach many, many users without running into impediments from user adoption coming from bad user experience or high gas fees or other impediments that are actually impediments to virality. So our job is really just to support developers and this is one of many ways that our team is trying to help support developers, especially in the very early stages. We're excited about people who are building DeFi applications. We're excited about people who are thinking about gaming, NFTs, Web3 social, Web3 identity, and just people who are building something ambitious, honestly. People that are building things that solve problems for non -cryptonatives at the end of the day. Yeah, very nice. And I suppose if we zoom out a bit, Keoni, and we think about the broader wider Ethereum ecosystem, it is really only, so next year will be 10 years really since the publication of the Ethereum white paper. So it's not really, you know, Ethereum hasn't been around all that long. Certainly hasn't. In crypto terms, it has, obviously. But in that short decade, shall we say, Ethereum has come a long way. There've been some stumbles along the way. There've been some pivots and to a certain extent, it's not that, you know, different teams and builders are kind of in making it up as they go. But in some ways, you know, we are because, you know, the jet is in the air, if you like, and we're trying to constantly build bigger and faster engines while the jet is in the air. Is any of that still a worry at this point? I think that the best way to build is by getting constant feedback from the market. So I think that the approach of launching something with a longer -term roadmap as Ethereum did is totally a reasonable thing to do. I mean, there have been a number of pivots, like you said, with initially the plan for Plasma to be the scaling solution. And then at some point, there is a plan for execution sharding to be the major effort. And it's really only been, I guess, in the past maybe three or four years that roll -ups became sort of the dominant plan for Ethereum scaling. And then I think about six months ago or so, the EF actually acknowledged that execution sharding is no longer really part of the plans. And they're just focused on supporting roll -ups. And that's like the vision going forward. So I think it's just an anecdote about how you don't really know until you have the system in production and you see like what kinds of things other people are able to build that interface well and figure out what the market wants as well as what the builder community wants. So it's actually better for Ethereum and anyone building anything to just try to adapt over time. I also feel that the current plan is not It's necessarily... like five years from now, we may not be looking back on it and being like, oh, exactly the decision that they made in 2023, that ended up being the final thing. There'll probably be other changes as well. And it comes from a mix of other voices in the room and people showing that there are other approaches that are important. That is actually something I wanted to mention as well, that with Monad, we feel very strongly about just trying to prove out hypotheses that we have and then push improvements back to Ethereum. So in the future, you'll see us proposing things as EIPs and proving out maybe that certain changes make sense, but then hoping to have those reflected in Ethereum someday, although it may take quite some time for that to happen, we know. But that's the only way to do it, is just to prove it out. Yeah. What kind of timeframe do you guys think about this stuff in Kioni when we think about the broader Ethereum landscape, I suppose? Because you talked about being excited by the vision of DeFi and open finance. And yeah, look, a lot of people are, but we've seen different waves and use cases and sub -communities come and go, like NFTs and things like that. And while the promise of open finance and DeFi is incredible, the realistic side of it today is a little bit different with the technical hurdles that perhaps keep the mainstream users outside of DeFi. Of course, the technical risks and the exploits that happen. And of course, the regulatory side as well, that's still a little bit unclear as to how open finance can hope to operate in a kind of seamless global economy when different jurisdictions, different governments have very different views on how all this works. I know these are big topics, Kioni, but I guess, how do you think about that going forward? I think the very first thing that has to happen is delivering a better user experience relative to whatever the incumbent is. I think there are other open questions that you mentioned that are factors as well for adoption. But if you're not from the start delivering a better user experience, then nothing else really matters. We see cases where Uber pioneered a new business model that was disruptive to existing incumbents, i .e. taxi drivers, and actually delivered a better user experience. And then people used that a lot. They benefited from it. They're so happy about it that they, ultimately, there was regulatory pressure to allow that to continue to exist. And ultimately, they built a new market that ended up now as commonly used. So I think that really any change has to come from the consumers, but the consumers have to be clamoring for that change because they are actually getting a better user experience. And we are seeing some cases like that already. For example, as a payments method, existing crypto networks are potentially a lot cheaper than using some of the traditional rails, sending remittance. That wasn't the word I'm thinking of, which is now going to bother me. But instead of charging several percentage points just to send money internationally, if you can send it much more cheaply using cryptocurrency, then that's a better user experience and then a lot of people are using that. Or if your local currency inflates at 50 % a year or something crazy like that, then you actually want a store of value that is not just subject to the policies of the government, which might be very counter to what's people that are holding the currency, like Argentinian peso. So we're seeing product market fit with certain crypto products, but to have it go nationwide, to have it go global, you just need to deliver better value. And I think this is a very long -winded way of saying that in a lot of cases with open finance or using DeFi as your personal finance solution, right now that might not be a better user experience, it might not be a better product, it might not be a cheaper product compared to trading on centralized exchanges. So that's the first thing that we have to solve.
The Crypto Conversation
A highlight from There are 281 Days Until the Bitcoin Halving
"Hi everyone, Andy Pickering here, I'm your host, and welcome to the Crypto Conversation, a Brave New Coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future in the Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency space. Hey folks, we have a new sponsor here at the Crypto Conversation, today's episode is brought to you by Coinsbee .com, the go -to platform for spending your crypto. With the biggest selection of brands across all gift card platforms and live in over 185 countries, Coinsbee supports the most relevant local brands for your everyday needs. They support more than 200 cryptocurrencies and offer a vast product range from gift cards and game points to mobile phone top -ups. Can't find what you're looking for? No worries. Coinsbee also offers Visa and Mastercard prepaid cards. So just go to coinsbee .com and turn your digital assets into real -world possibilities. And now it is on with the show. Welcome to the Crypto Conversation, slightly different podcast for you today. I'm just going to run through some data points related to the Bitcoin halving and of course the Bitcoin ETF stuff. So we're going to look at all of that today. So there's no guest, it's just me talking to myself. Glad to have you company. Now, if you listen to this on Apple podcasts or in Spotify as an audio podcast, you can do that. That's fine. But I do recommend if you've got time, just go along to YouTube and watch it on YouTube. You'll find the video on the Braid New Coin YouTube channel because I'm using various charts, tweets, all sorts of data points today. And yeah, if you can follow along and see what I'm talking about, that will help. But otherwise, do feel free just to listen as a normal audio podcast. Just before we do get started, let's give a warm welcome and a shout out to our new sponsor, Coinsbee. More crypto honey for your crypto money. Of course, Coinsbee, the website is coinsbee .com and there's a link in the show notes which will help you find all sorts of interesting ways to spend your crypto in rewards. All that good stuff, coinsbee .com. All right, let's get on with the show. So we begin over here at the Braid New Coin website, funnily enough. And we're going to go to the Bitcoin halving page, which is just, it's under data and charts and then go to halving. And here we are, the Bitcoin halving. Now I'm sure you know what the Bitcoin halving is, but of course, basically every four years there is a Bitcoin halving in which the block reward essentially is reduced by half. So the next Bitcoin halving is the fourth Bitcoin halving and that is when the current block reward of 6 .25 Bitcoins will reduce to 3 .125 Bitcoins. And of course, there is a timer, a countdown on the Brave New Coin halving page. So the countdown shows that we have 281 days essentially to go roughly to the next Bitcoin halving, which takes us through, I don't know, through the math, April, May, something like that next year. There's all sorts of price data as to where Bitcoin was at various stages of the previous halving cycle. It's not going to go through all that now, but you can have a look at that. And of course, there's this fantastic chart here as well, which is speculative, of course, but fascinating nonetheless. I should point out that the guy that put this chart together and really put all the data together for this page and works across various parts of the crypto asset data business for Brave New Coin, I'm going to have him on the podcast sometime within hopefully the next week or two, certainly within the next three weeks. I think I won't say his name because he may not sure if he wants to stay anonymous or not yet, but he did this chart. So we'll get him to explain the chart more when he comes on the show. But briefly, I can do it just briefly. You can see it's basically broken up into these four year halving cycles. So following each halving, that's a halving there, there and there, as when traditionally we've had this bull market, which is in the green. And then, of course, following the peak of the bull market, we get the dreaded crypto bear market in the pink. And then following that, we range really. This is ranging through the yellow area, but kind of broken up into these three little segments. You can call it, you know, accumulation, ranging, expansion. And that's kind of where we are at the moment. We're in the ranging slowly towards the upside as we lead up to the next halving. Anyway, we'll talk more about that later. Let's keep it moving, folks. So you're probably aware, of course, that BlackRock, largest asset manager in the world, have filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF with the SEC. SEC, of course, famously has refused all Bitcoin spot ETFs to date. But James Sefarat and Eric Belkanis, I hope I'm saying those names right, they're Bloomberg reporters essentially, but specifically ETF reporters, ETF nerds, two of the biggest ETF nerds on the planet, really. So they, of course, follow this very closely. And I thought that was interesting. So a week or two ago, beginning of August, James said, based on recent events and new information, Eric and I are officially increasing our spot Bitcoin ETF approval odds to 65 percent. That's up from 50 percent a couple of weeks ago and up from 1 percent a few months ago. So that's quite striking, I think. We're now up to 65 percent chance of approval. That is bullish, I think.
The Crypto Conversation
A highlight from Zeebu - Disrupting the Telecom Carrier Space
"Hi everyone, Andy Pickering here, I'm your host and welcome to the Crypto Conversation, a Brave New Coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future in the Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Hey folks, we have a new sponsor here at the Crypto Conversation. Today's episode is brought to you by coinsbe .com, the go -to platform for spending your crypto. With the biggest selection of brands across all gift card platforms and live in over 185 countries, Coinsbe supports the most relevant local brands for your everyday needs. They support more than 200 cryptocurrencies and offer a vast product range from gift cards, game points to mobile phone top -ups. Can't find what you're looking for? No worries, Coinsbe also offers Visa and Mastercard prepaid cards. So just go to coinsbe .com and turn your digital assets into real -world possibilities. And now it is on with the show. My guest today is Raj Mahambar. Raj is the co -founder and CEO at Zebu, a new product that brings a blockchain -based settlement platform to the telecom carrier space. Very interesting. Welcome to the show, Raj. Hey Andy, thanks for having me and thank you to everyone that's listening. Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you here, Raj. Let's do what we do at the beginning of the show. I will invite you to please introduce yourself. I'd like to hear a little bit about your background and your story and what you've been doing in the lead up to co -founding Zebu. Yeah, sure. Absolutely, Andy. So the beginning of my career really started more finance -focused, right? I worked as a principal at a venture fund where they also had a telco arm. And while I was doing my work, I all delved into blockchain quite a bit. And I also delved into the telco operations where I noticed that one of the biggest problems the telco industry had was settlements, right? Hence, I formulated the plan for Zebu and tried to streamline those as much as possible. Awesome. So tell us a little bit more about the background here then. So you mentioned that the settlement is a problem in the telecom space. So forgive me, Raj, I'm not super familiar with the telecom space. I hope to learn a little bit today. I'm sure the listeners can learn something as well. So yeah, I mean, just explain, I guess, the problem that you're trying to solve. Let me start by differentiating between retail operators and wholesale voice and SMS carriers. So where are you based, Andy? I'm in Auckland, New Zealand. Okay. And who's your cell phone provider? I believe it is, I think it's SPARC New Zealand. Okay, so they would be your retail operator, right? Yeah. That's the customer facing bit in the telco space. So let's say you make an international call or send a text from Auckland. Your provider, you make that call or SMS over to the US, let's say. Your provider wouldn't be directly interconnected with Verizon. They will need to be interconnected with a wholesale voice or SMS carrier. And then that carrier will route that voice or SMS, that call or SMS through one or two more carriers over to Verizon that are directly interconnected with Verizon. So essentially, the point is, there's two types of companies, there's tier one retail facing operators, and then there's tier two and tier three wholesale voice and carriers, right? So the product we've created at Zebu is more focused towards the tier two and tier three companies. And similar the arms that tier one companies have, right? Because these carriers, as I mentioned, they route these calls and messages through multiple other carriers to terminate those at the end destination. So these are global transactions, right? And the global wires take anywhere up to 96 hours in immersed markets, and even 16 days to a month in unimmersed markets. Now, that is because number one, the industry primarily runs on the dollar and the euro. And many of these companies, they need to take central bank authorization to do the forks conversions, right? And that's only if they even have it available. If you think about some of the African regions, they don't have access to the US dollar, right? So at Zebu, we've taken this 96 hours to 16 day period and minimized it down to 30 seconds to 10 minutes max on the platform for value transfer. Well, yeah, look, I'm actually just looking through your white paper now, Raj. And so in the white paper, you guys say that the telecom wholesale voice industry is obviously critical for global telecommunications, acting as a backbone that facilitates the exchange of voice data and messaging services between carriers and operators. However, the industry is plagued by several challenges, including inefficient processes, long remittance delays, lack of transparency, revenue loss due to currency exchange and high costs. And all of these challenges lead to revenue loss for industry players. And I think you've just kind of explained that. But yeah, good to see it explained nicely in your white paper as well. So this is I mean, yeah, it's a big, big task to take on the global telecom industry there, Raj. Yeah, yeah, absolutely right. I mean, so as you mentioned, the forex costs, the wire transfer costs, these are also recurring charges that these carriers face. And on top of that, this is a low margin business. So being able to roll volume of transactions is how they can generate proper beta, right? So the idea behind Zebu is that, first of all, they don't have the liquidity crunch anymore. And also by limiting on -ramp and off -ramp and being able to keep their running balance and stablecoin on the platform, the carriers will be able to do trends as needed basis without having to worry about constant charges, such as making charges and forex conversions. Right. So the idea is that Zebu will provide a kind of like a transparent, decentralized ecosystem for voice traffic exchange and an ecosystem for buyers and sellers to exchange voice traffic directly, right? Essentially, right. So let's say I am a carrier and you are as well. I am rendering my services over to you. We can have our own commercial arrangement that is off of the platform, which is already set. And now let's say we both go to the Zebu platform. Each one of us do the KYB, get onboarded, everything. And it's really as simple as, let's say, if I rendered you $100 ,000 worth of services, I generate an invoice, upload it onto the Zebu platform. I input your customer ID. It shows up on your interface. And with a one -click interaction, you can pull down $100 ,000 from your bank account, crypto wallet, credit card, debit card, comes to the platform. And as you initiate the transaction to send over to me, it instantaneously gets swapped for the Zebu token. And that value is transferred over to me. Now it's up to me if I keep my funds in the Zebu token, if I ask for an instant swap to Stablecoin, or if I want to move the value directly over to my bank account in fiat, which as of now still takes one to two days, but we are actively pursuing a digital banking license, so we can actually streamline fiat on -ramp and off -ramp for all of our customers as well. Okay, got it, got it. So explain then, I guess I'm looking at the Zebu technology stack, all seems to make sense. And there's a token, of course. So just explain to me, Raj, who is the target audience for Zebu? Let's start there. The target audience as of now is telecom carriers, right? They are going to be our primary users for Zebu token's utility. But in our phase three planning, we are actually currently working out a product that's going to be B2C. So those retail operators I mentioned will be able to do settlements with their end customers, which is people such as me and you for their phone bills using Zebu token. Right, right. So tell us about the Zebu token then. Has that been launched or is that yet to launch? It has been launched, actually. We got listed on Lbank about a week and a half ago. I saw that on your Twitter earlier today, actually. So nice, congrats for that. Thank you, thank you. And so the token itself, that will drive the ecosystem forward. I can see on your website, it says there's seven businesses have been onboarded. Soft cap and 5 million USD. Is that just because very early days and just at the beginning of the Zebu journey? Yeah, so we've actually achieved the soft cap and the hard cap. So we've raised $25 million so far, right? And going back to our customers, we are right now partnered with Bankai Group. And Bankai Group is one of the largest telecom carriers there is, right? Probably top five in the world. They do about $2 .1 billion in revenue, those are just rough numbers, but about $2 .1 billion in annual revenue, right? And they are one of our customers and through them, they're also helping us expand our user base. So as of now, we have a total waitlist of 89 customers getting ready and comfortable with the platform, finishing their KYBs. Our business partner team is actually training their treasury and accounts teams as well. And as soon as they get the go -ahead, their names will start popping up on the website as well. Fantastic. And so are you looking to work with other telecom networks around the world? And I can see you do have a list of some of those partners that you're working with already on your website. Bridgevoice, Novatel, Broadband Telecom, MGW, to name a few. Yes, correct. So those are the ones that are already doing transactions, test transactions on our platform. And along with them, like I said, there's a list of 89 more companies whose names are going to start popping up on the website soon. So how quickly do you think this will start to take off as all these other businesses come online? To be entirely honest, Andy, look, I mean, so far, we on our end, we have stayed very careful. We've gone slowly as far as the platform goes, right? Because as soon as we want everything to be as streamlined as possible, as soon as transactions start, right? So the platform is very, very robust. Technologically, we are set, but kind of these are all legacy -based players, right? They haven't tried new systems. So we want to make sure that they are comfortable and ready to go. But of speaking how fast we might be going is, we assume that by two to three weeks from now, the platform is going to start full volume at its capacity. And we are actually projecting to do about $1 .5 billion in transactions on the platform over the next 8 to 12 months. Yeah, fascinating. So yeah, lots going on then. I mean, do you think the telecoms industry is ready for this kind of technology and this kind of marketplace and a token? Yeah, absolutely. Look, I mean, so when I've walked you through that flow of transaction, right? We are actually also providing, as a customer acquisition cost, we are also providing 3 .5 % of each settlement value back to the users of the platform. So we have a criteria for that on what percentage you would get. But let's say you sent me $100 ,000 on the platform. Each one of us gets 3 ,500 equivalent of Zebu tokens on each transaction. Now, not every one of them will get 3 .5%, but we have specific criteria on that. But since we are increasing their margins by almost 50 % through our loyalty program, and on top of that, an additional 75 % by cutting their forex and wire costs, the carriers are incredibly intrigued to get started on the platform. Our flow of user base has been the easiest part of the whole process. Wow. Yeah, that is interesting. And so what sounds like, I guess, the telecom industry is always evolving, but certainly ready for some disruption as well, right, Raj? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
The Crypto Conversation
A highlight from Swell - A Voyage Into Liquid Staking
"Hi everyone, Andy Pickering here, I'm your host and welcome to the Crypto Conversation, a Brave New Coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future in the Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency space. Hey folks, we have a new sponsor here at the Crypto Conversation. Today's episode is brought to you by Coinsbee .com, the go -to platform for spending your crypto. With the biggest selection of brands across all gift card platforms and live in over 185 countries, Coinsbee supports the most relevant local brands for your everyday needs. They support more than 200 cryptocurrencies and offer a vast product range from gift cards, game points to mobile phone top -ups. Can't find what you're looking for? No worries, Coinsbee also offers Visa and Mastercard prepaid cards. So just go to coinsbee .com and turn your digital assets into real -world possibilities. And now it is on with the show. My guest today is Daniel Dizon. Daniel is the founder and CEO at Swell Labs. Swell Labs is a major contributor to the Swell protocol DAO and ecosystem. Of course, Swell is a non -custodial ETH liquid -stating protocol that helps you optimize your yield in DeFi. Welcome to the show, Daniel. Thanks for having me Andy, it's a pleasure to be here. Pleasure to have you here, Daniel. Let's do what we do at the beginning of the show. Could you please introduce yourself? Some people will know who you are, but some people won't. So yeah, for those that don't, please just give us some of your backstory, what you've been doing in the lead up to creating Swell Labs. Yeah, thanks so much. So my name is Daniel, I'm the founder of Swell, as well as a non -custodial liquid Ethereum staking protocol. My background has been a mix of finance, technology and innovation. Prior to founding Swell, I was a corporate advisor to various clients on blockchain, digital assets and portfolio management. And also was a Web2 entrepreneur. So co -founded, scaled and exited a traditional SaaS business, and then have always been sort of interested and passionate about crypto, in particular DeFi, mainly from a philosophical standpoint, and then saw an opportunity in early 2022, sort of late 2021, to contribute to the ecosystem by building out Swell, which is a different staking protocol, and saw not only the commercial opportunity, but more importantly, the sort of importance at a systemic level to ensure a healthy, diversified and decentralized liquid staking protocol. And here we are today. Sure, sure. And so you can very much understand with the merge Ethereum's move to proof of stake, certainly an opportunity for, I guess, entrepreneurs such as yourself to spin up various variations on the liquid staking protocols. That's exactly what has happened. So we can talk about that. I'm interested in though, Daniel, you said that you're really interested in the wonderful world of DeFi, particularly from a philosophical point of view. So I think we can get a sense of what that means, but love you to flesh that out. And yeah, let's put some color on the tree. Yeah, absolutely. So it's really a confluence of sort of the psychopunk philosophy, as well as economics, particularly on Austrian economics, and these ideas that have Hayek, Rothbard, Mises, in regards to things like competitive currencies, things like stateless currencies and that sort of thing. And then, like most people, you delve into Bitcoin first, and then you move into Ethereum, and then you see all the innovation that's happening on Ethereum, the programmability of it, and ecosystem of builders, and that sort of thing, and the capital flow to the system, and then try to remain true to those original crypto values, which express themselves with things like self -sovereignty, privacy, autonomy, and sort of self -custody, censorship resistance, all these sorts of things. And then the sort of expression of that is through building up whatever layer of the stack that you want to build on. And in particular with Ethereum as the base layer for, effectively, the future of finance, i .e. decentralized finance, i .e. DeFi, I thought there was an opportunity to help contribute to that wider architecture being built out, and the primitive that I chose was on liquid staking. That's now the biggest category in DeFi at the moment, and powers a lot of the other categories, like lending and borrowing, DEXs, and that sort of thing. Yeah, very much so. And look, just for anyone that doesn't understand what liquid staking is and the importance of it to the current state of the Ethereum network, do you want to just give us kind of a quick high -level summary of what that is and how it works? Yeah, sure thing. So at a principles level, staking is a way to secure the network. So Ethereum moved to a fully POS system in September of last year with the merge, and what that enabled was the consensus mechanism to merge between the existing blockchains that are running separately. But just at a simple level, what it is, it's a way to secure the network. And then in exchange for securing the network or putting your Ether at stake, you earn rewards. And the whole point of liquid staking is to do that in a way where you can earn rewards, but also get the advantage of rehypothecating that collateral, using it again. So in traditional vanilla or i .e. liquid staking, in liquid staking, you have to choose like, do I want to use my ETH to earn staking rewards or do I want to use it in DeFi, like to use S collateral or something like that? That was before liquid staking, that was the trade -off, but now you can do both. So what happens is people will liquid stake and then they'll receive an LST in return to like a receipt token. They'll earn rewards, but they can also use that again in DeFi, whether that's to provide liquidity or to collateralize a stablecoin or something like that. The other advantage as well of liquid staking is that it abstracts away all the complexity of sort of spinning up your own validator and managing that as well. So it reduces the technical hurdles and there's some financial hurdles as well that it sort of abstracts away. So it's really, really easy for the user and should be a net benefit to the Ethereum ecosystem because the more that's staked, the higher the sort of economic security is for Ethereum because it's more sort of costly to attack and that sort of thing. That's right. Of course, one of the crucial aspects that you alluded to there, Daniel, is for someone to spin up a node, you need 32 ETH, right? And 32 ETH is not that much ETH, but in certain parts of the world, it actually is a lot of ETH. And that does very, very much price a lot of people out of being able to, well, stake their ETH, which is not cool and not really congruent with the principles of crypto. So of course, the Swell network and some of these other protocols also enable just average everyday users who might not have a big bag of ETH. It means that they can stake their ETH as well and participate in those same rewards, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. Tell us then, Daniel, like I was looking at Swell and I know there's one of the big platforms as Lido that people will be aware of. Then there's some others like Swell that are just also reasonably big. Love to understand, I suppose, the scale of whatever numbers you want to use in terms of how many people are staking ETH via Swell, how much ETH is being staked, and you call them voyages, I think. So maybe we can talk through some numbers and then we can tell the Voyager story. Yeah, absolutely. So Ethereum staking overall is still in the relatively earlier nascent stage. There's about 20 % of all ETH staked at the moment. And if you compare that against other sort of fully POS, more mature systems, it's hovering more towards sort of 50 to 80 % range. So we still have some multiples to go in terms of the ETH that's going to be staked. And a lot of that was catalyzed or de -risked in an upgrade called Japella, which happened in, I think, April of this year. So now you can do redemption, you can do withdrawals. I guess that's the first thing is that there's going to be more stake coming. The other thing is that, yes, there is a sort of a concentration of market share within the top players. A lot of that is just the nature of the actual vertical itself. It does tend towards these flywheels on flywheels sort of emergent phenomenon and Swell itself. So we have been live for a touch over about three months, I believe, and we're one of the fastest growing DeFi protocols and one of the largest recipients of new inflows. And we scaled up to nearly 45 ,000 ETH, which in today's terms is just north of 80 million USD. And so we've been able to add circa 3 ,000 ETH a week consistently and we expect that number to uptick as well. And part of the success of that was we had the opportunity to have a look at what worked in the market, what didn't work and why, and how we could build around that and also introduce our own sort of bits and pieces of innovation. And one of these bits and pieces of innovation was to drive a real community gamified approach to boost rapid liquidity. And so what we have done is create something called the Voyage, which is a way to incentivize and reward early adopters and early stakers into Swell protocol. And as a result, what happens is people who stake with Swell at our current stage will earn what's effectively like a points -based campaign or pearls, which is what we're calling it, and these pearl hunters or the people that are crewing pearls will then be able to effectively redeem Swell token in exchange for those pearls when we do our TGE and then instantiate the DAO more efficiently. And so that has been a success to date. Not only do we have sort of the 80 million FDB and continuing to grow, we also have 10 ,000 unique wallets. We just passed that milestone, I think, in the last 12 hours or so. And on top of that, we also have a ton of liquidity to back our TVL. And our utilization rates in DeFi, which is how many people will use Sweets just beyond holding it, is about 50%, which goes to show that we have a really quick and native audience behind us. And we're looking forward to just continuing the journey from there. And that's the Voyage and Swell. Yeah. And I mean, it's really interesting what is happening in DeFi. It's happening in crypto, certainly happening in metaverse NFT crypto spaces. But it's happening in just more traditional fintech apps, investing apps full stop as this gamification that you're talking about. And I guess part of it is just because the kind of people that are investing today, it's kind of millennials and younger as the always on, extremely online digital generation. And so they're using digital tools to conduct their investment activity, whether it's like in fintech or crypto or DeFi or NFTs or whatever it is. And I love the kind of the storytelling part of this as well. You know, collect pearls to become a citizen of the Swell Dow. I joined the Voyage. There's like some really cool imagery undersea, final destination, Swell City. And, you know, there's multiple chapters that can be unlocked. I'm sure you're kind of telling the story into the future, but it's just interesting to see, yeah, people really stretch their imaginations and you can only see this trend continuing, right, Daniel? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's one of the awesome things about DeFi and crypto generally is that you can do these sort of wonderful experiments and, you know, create a real community around a particular idea. Yeah. I was fascinated also to see with Swell, you guys have some some pretty good backers or investors involved. Mark Cuban, Bankless Framework, Anthony Sesino. And yeah, it's some pretty big names there, Daniel. Yeah, I mean, I think it's yeah, I mean, we're very sort of fortunate to have the support that we do have from a lot of people that have been in the Ethereum ecosystem since its earliest days and have shown to be good actors within the ecosystem. And, you know, I think it's always it's always a challenge to start a DeFi protocol, but having sort of those sort of associations does help a lot. And yeah, we've been very sort of it would be very intentional as well about how we structured the support, because we want Swell to be a mainstay of DeFi and the real public good and utility for folks, not only for the Swell community, obviously, that's paramount, but also just for Ethereum and crypto more broadly. Yeah. What do you think happens into the future, Daniel, as potentially more and more Ethereum is staked? So you said that we're still very early in that staking journey. And obviously we are. I think you said that there are probably several orders of magnitude more Ethereum to be staked along the way. Of course, there'll be a narrative that builds them. They'll be just that much less, presumably Ethereum just sitting in exchanges available for purchase or trading. What kind of implications do you think that has for Ethereum going forward? Yeah, I think I think, again, we're in the early stages of staking. That sort of implies we're also in the earlier stages of Ethereum adoption. I think in terms of the Ethereum roadmap, a lot of it's sort of been the rest out with the merge and also with Chappella and also that's sort of coming with sharding accounts direction and all these sorts of things. But more concretely, in terms of what will happen in the future, I think what will happen is that we'll have more and more estate. There'll be more and more adoption and there'll be more and more complexity introduced at various layers of the stack. So even though in the state, that stake will then be replicated for users collateral and you have derivatives, you have synthetics. You have also technologies such as DBT coming through, technologies such as Iglea coming through, which will create this sort of daisy chain. And a good analogy is like DeFi speed running the evolution of TradFi, except it's just going to be on chain. And then so that sort of complexity primitive is coming. There'll be restaking LSTs, there'll be restake LST -backed stablecoins. There'll be all this sort of range of different and interesting things that those will sort of build out. And hopefully, we see product market fit and capitalism will do its thing. And then hopefully, we see more of a conference as well between sort of TradFi, DeFi and CFi. And we do it in a way that sort of learns from the lessons that we had with sort of the mid 2022 onwards implosion of a couple of things. But notwithstanding, DeFi continued to stay despite all that. So I just think there'll be just more complexity, more stake and more users.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"below 18.5" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"$20 on passes. Stephen morning to you so the racers hotting up and it appears that the fight is well and truly on. Supporters of the trade minister petty mordent whose currently in second place Rishi sunak's in first are accusing the foreign secretary Liz truss campaign of black ops. This comes amid claims that Downing Street prevented morden from cheering a key cabinet committee because she was, quote, not up to the job. The former Brexit chief negotiator, lord frost has warned he has reservations about her leadership as he did remove her as his deputy because she did not master the detail that story is in the time. So interesting revelations coming out about people in that race. And you'll have to wonder how much the mud slinging will damage the Tories when one leader is chosen and perhaps they face labor at a general election. But also travel chaos to cum Leon. You know what, just on the Tory thing, it's not just that. If you back the winner, you might get a ministerial job, so I think that's what they also thinking about yeah, but train strikes here in the UK. They've already brought networks to a standstill in many people, have turned to working from home again really as they can't get on the trains and more misery. I'm afraid it's ahead as train drivers are planning a first coordinated nationwide strike in 27 years. Now this is all overpay the RMT have also announced a further two days of walkouts that's on the 18th and 20th of August that's adding to the 27th of July walkout and the as left action will coincide with the start of the Commonwealth Games. Now that's happening in Birmingham on July 28th. And of course, that is threatening to affect the attendance of the game. That story in the FT. And you're also a story that I was very close to your heart to do with people exercising Leanne. Close to my heart, yes, but this is quite interesting. Apparently, people who are underway to not always more active according to new research can be leaner, so a team monitored 150 had a BMI below 18.5 lower than the normal. That was just for two weeks. And they compared them with people who have a normal BMI, the results were a real, real surprise. The author said, the very lean people had low levels of activity, but they markers of heart health were still very good, so this suggests that low body fat may actually Trump a physical activity. However, I think it's important that only 150 people were involved in the survey over two weeks and genetics play a big part not all of us are naturally lean. Not a very sample size early on. Well, thank you for that. That's the look at this morning's UK papers with our Leon garands. This is Bloomberg. Markets, headlines, and breaking news 24 hours a day. At Bloomberg dot com, the Bloomberg business app. Quick take. This is a Bloomberg business flash. From Bloomberg's European headquarters in London I'm Stephen Carroll with this Bloomberg radio business flash we are 17 minutes into the trading session here in Europe. The stock 600 down by a third of 1%, the FTSE 100 down by three tenths of 1% the dac, excuse me, those are the structures that is up by a third of 1% FTSE 100 also up by a third of 1%. The Dax in Frankfurt moving higher by two thirds of 1% this morning we are seeing the Italian
Bloomberg Radio New York
"below 18.5" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Now the paper review on Bloomberg daybreak Europe. The news you need to know from today's papers. Let's take a look at some of the stories we've picked out from this morning's UK newspapers for you. The times has a story on penny mordens ally decrying a so called black ops campaign, the Financial Times is all the details on UK train drivers to strike in the first mass walkout in 27 years and in the times again how staying lean may be exercise for long-term health, Liang garands is here with details on all of these stories. Leon starting with the conservative leadership race. Yes, Steven, good morning to you, sir as a race to be the next conservative leader and of course the prime minister heats up. It appears that the fight is well and truly on, supporters of the trade minister penny morden to his currently in second place are accusing the foreign secretary Liz truss campaign of black ops, this comes amid claims that Downing Street prevented morden from cheering a key cabinet committee because she was just not up to the job and the former Brexit chief negotiator lord frost has warned he is reservations about her leadership and he removed her as his deputy because she did not master the detail that story is currently in the times. One wonders if any more than it is the real threat given the slings and arrows that she's now taking. Look, what about the train and travel chaos that could be to come? Train strikes in the UK have already brought networks to a standstill, haven't they Carolina many people had actually turned to working from home again during these periods, and more misery is her head as train drivers are planning a first coordinated nation wide strike in 27 years over pay and that's happening this month. The RMT have also announced a further two days of walkouts on the 18th and 20th of August, adding to the 27th of July, and as left's action will coincide with the start of the Commonwealth Games which are happening in Birmingham on July 28th. Now this is threatening to hit a tendon that story in the FT. And Leigh Anne, a story that I know you have been reflecting deeply on this morning and this is to do with exercise. Oh, sorry, I just needed to sleep, but I'm back, yes. I have been reflecting on the story because it was quite shocking. So people who are underweight are not always more active. And this is according to new research coming out of China. So a team monitored 150 people who had a BMI that's your body mass index below 18.5, so that's lower than normal they monitored them for two weeks. They then compared them with people who had a normal BMI. The results, as they said, what a surprise that authors said, the very lean people had low levels of activity, but they markers of heart health were really good. So this suggests that low body fat may triumph physical activity. However, when I looked more into it, I thought not all of us are genetically slim or have a phosphor metabolism, so isn't it just what works for you on a day to today basis? Well, I mean, an 18 and a half BMI is very, very slim under that is extremely thin. But anyway, very interesting story. Yeah, start an exercise. I'm a big fan of the exercise. Good stuff. The anger is thank you so much for bringing us some of the best stories in this morning's newspapers. This is Bloomberg. Markets, headlines, and breaking news 24 hours a day. The Bloomberg business app. Quick take. This is a Bloomberg business flash. From Bloomberg's European headquarters in London, I'm Stephen Caro with this Bloomberg radio business flash and let's start with that red headline we brought to the top of the arrow by car sales in the European Union falling by 15% the worst job since June of 1996 if you include the UK and the rest of the FTA that's a 17% drop. We've seen huge drop for a Volkswagen sales down by 25% year on year. It's still out of sales down by 17% a year on year, another company you're watching through this morning at fever tree, the drinks maker, reporting revenue growing 13% year on year to a 161 million pounds for the first half of the year but that is lower than estimates the company and saying they're seeing logistics and cost headwinds impacting their second half results. More
Bloomberg Radio New York
"below 18.5" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Now the paper review on Bloomberg daybreak Europe. The news you need to know from today's papers. Now let's take a look at some of the stories that we picked out from this morning's UK newspapers, the times has a story on penny morden's ally, decrying black ops campaigns against her. The Financial Times has all the details on the UK train drivers are striking in the first mass walkout in 27 years, and the times says that staying lean may beat exercise in terms of long-term health joining us now has been guaranteed on these stories, so the Conservative Party leadership race Leanne. Yeah, absolutely. It's heating up isn't it Caroline and Steven. And they choosing the next leader of the party and the prime minister and it appears that the fight is really on. So supporters of trade minister penny morden who is currently in second place are accusing the foreign secretary Liz truss campaign of black ops. This comes amid claims that Downing Street prevented mordent from cheering a key cabinet committee because she was not up to the job. The former Brexit chief negotiator lord frost, who was backing this trust, warned he is grave reservations about a modern leadership and he wrote clash on certain people who are going for this and she was kind of not even really in the political sphere. We didn't know about her so relatively unknown. And that was that's in the times today. Your next story, Leanne, to do with travel chaos, more of it. Yeah, more of it. And we'll train strikes in the UK have a really broad networks to stand still, and many people have turned to working from home again on those certain days, and more misery is ahead. I'm sorry to tell you as train drivers are planning a first coordinated nationwide strike in 27 years and that is overpaying it's happening later this month. The RMT have also announced a further two days of walkouts on the 18th and 20th of August, adding to the 27th of July, and as left's action will coincide with the start of the Commonwealth Games which are taking place in Birmingham on the 28th of July, now this is really a threatening to hit the attendance of those Commonwealth Games. That story in the FT. And just lastly the times that this is pretty controversial about exercise. Yeah, I'm not quite sure about this, but it is controversial, so people who are underweight are not always more active than those with a normal BMI. That's according to new research, which has come out of China, a team monitored 150 people who had a BMI below 18.5, which is pretty low, but otherwise healthy for two weeks and they compared them to people who had a normal BMI the results were a real surprise that authors said, the very lean people had low levels of activity, but their markers of health were really good. So this suggests that low body fat may actually triumph over physical activity, but my big question is 150 people were monitored and not everybody has good genetics to be naturally slim, so isn't it what works for you? I think that's a very healthy attitude to have towards it. It's where it's saying, you know, we're talking about a very short period, as you say, quite a limited sample as well, but interesting. So maybe if you eat less or overall, yes, or look for a balance elsewhere in your life. Also a plan. Okay, Leon guerin, thank you very much for taking us through what's in the newspapers today. FRN T is a function on the terminal if you want to check out some of the stories of being highlighted there. In the UK media, let's go next to China where we've had those GDP figures which mean that it's much less likely now that Beijing will reach its annual growth target of about 5 and a half percent for this year that I just quarterly figures showing the slowest growth since the start of the pandemic, the data showed a recovery in retail sales, but no improvement in the troubled property sector, highest prices fell month on month in June. Let's bring in our chief Asia economics correspondent and his life for us this morning in Hong Kong good morning to you and how bad are these figures in terms of a picture of the Chinese economy? It certainly doesn't point to a turnaround. You could say it shows that gross is maybe bottomed out, but there's not a lot of optimism in it. The 0.4% expansion in the economy over the second quarter, especially with well short of the forecasts of 1.2%. I think it shows you the whole that was left in the economy from closing down Shanghai in April and May. Like you say, under property side of things, which really gets overlooked because of COVID zero, but property makes up about 20% of total economic activity. We're seeing ongoing declines there in prices and inactivity. So that's a real drag. The unemployment data actually improved fell to around 5%. It's kind of a survey jobless rate. It's not a perfect read, but it's all we have, but within that, though, use unemployment hit a fresh record of almost 20%. So that's a clear negative. The other data points I would say to you would be the monthly figures, retail spending looked pretty good, gained over 3%, but of course you have to net out inflation there, especially given the impact of the price of petrol. Industrial output and investment also stabilizing. So like I said at the start, you could argue the economy stabilizing would certainly not really showing a robust turnaround. Okay, so is there any way for Beijing can make this growth target? We know it's a very important year politically. Will there be more stimulus? I think that there will be more support coming and with the interest in this morning the Central Bank had an opportunity to put more money into the financial system and they didn't. And that's because liquidity or low interest rates are not really part of the problem in China. The problem is this kind of combination of very weak confidence in the real estate sector, stemming from a big crackdown last year by the authorities on some of these troubled property developers. So that's still playing out. And on the other side, you've got the very aggressive measures to try and keep a lid on the disease spreading. And most people say to you how really can you have animal spirits being unleashed or how could a consumers get back to normal, give me ongoing stop start either through lockdowns or ongoing mass testing and all the rest of it. So all of this is going to be a drag on activity and it does mean it's going to have to be extra support for the government and that would probably come in a way of spending rather than the Central Bank and most likely will come in the form of infrastructure projects, maybe green energy alternative energy products could be part of that. But there certainly will be more support coming because like I said, to start the growth target 5 and a half percent, which is politically important, they're not going to achieve that, but it will certainly want to make
Talk Radio 1190 KFXR
"below 18.5" Discussed on Talk Radio 1190 KFXR
"Conditions where you need to grow you to make sure you get enough nutrients. Those are places where not going to go want to go very long. In fact, it doesn't mean you need to eat all the time. But, you know, going long is not recommended. The other major thing is if you're underweight, that is, if you don't have If your body mass index is, for example, less than 20, you know, and you know, the body mass index about erupted about 25 normal down below 18.5 is considered underweight. If you don't have the body fat stores, and you should go that long, right? It's just logical that you shouldn't be fasting for long periods of time. But other than that, that's about it. Almost everybody else. Hand fast, because, remember our bodies have that ability to store energy. It's sort of like your refrigerator yet you put food in the fridge so that you don't have to go to the supermarket three times a day. Like that's the same thing as our body. Does our body put some of this food this food energy into body fat, So when you don't eat, it will just take some out. That's all. So the whole I ideas that most people can fast. That's what brought us to survive for thousands of years. Otherwise, we would never be able to survive. You know, a period where where we had no food available well, and you talk about in the book that when we were hunter gatherers, we didn't have food at the ready in the drive through. It was work. We ate more like animals of the wild. And I want to get to that in just a moment more with Dr Jason Fung coming up from Portland to.
600 WREC
"below 18.5" Discussed on 600 WREC
"Conditions where you need to grow, you need to make sure you get enough nutrients. Those are places where not going to go want to go very long. In fact, it doesn't mean you need to eat all the time. But, you know, going wrong is not recommended. The other major thing is if you're underweight, that is, if you don't have If your body mass index is, for example, less than 20, you know, And you know the body mass index about about 25 normal down below 18.5 is considered underway. If you don't have the body fat stores, and you shouldn't go that long, right? It's just logical that you shouldn't be fasting for long periods of time. But other than that, that's about it. Almost everybody else. Hand fast, because, remember our bodies have that ability to store energy. It's sort of like your refrigerator yet you put food in the fridge so that you don't have to go to the supermarket three times a day. Like that's the same thing as our body. Does. Our body put some of the food the food energy into body fat, So when you don't eat, it will just take some out. That's all. So the whole I ideas that most people can fight. That's what brought us to survive for thousands of years. Otherwise, we would never be able to survive. You know, a period where where we had no food available well, and you talk about in the book that when we were hunter gatherers, we didn't have food at the ready in the drive through. It was work. We ate more like animals of the wild, and I want to get to that in just a moment more with Dr Jason Fung coming up from Portland to Albany and all Eight cities in between. So why Michael Barry show is nationwide. Register.
WSB programming
CDC Issues Warning as Students Return to School
"Coronavirus cases to tell you about here in Georgia, 4000 reported Friday alone. That's the biggest jump in cases since January. The C D. C with the coronavirus warning as students head back to school here Still, BSP Cheryl Castro, CDC director Rochelle Walensky says following CDC guidelines is the best way to keep kids safe in schools. We do so by getting as many people around them who are eligible for vaccination to be vaccinated. And to keep our schools masked right now. Wolinski and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona participated in a town hall where they took questions from parents and students about returning to in person learning this fall on this first week of school, 185 covid cases reported in the Cobb County school system, which returned Monday, 166 cases in Gwinnett schools, which reopened Wednesday Sports Baseball
Word on the Street
CDC Official Issues Warning to Metro Atlanta School Districts
"Many of Metro plant is biggest school district disease that is transmitted in the schools. The places that aren't taking the prevention strategies. The places that aren't masking C D. C Director Rochelle Walensky and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona participated in a Boston town hall where they took questions from parents and students about returning to in person learning this fall. Meanwhile, Cobb County schools have confirmed over 185 cases of Covid since the new school year started Monday. Masks are optional. The Cobb County schools Gwinnett County schools are reporting 166 cases since school began Wednesday when it's schools required the use of masks the war of words between President Biden in Florida Governor Rhonda Santa's over covid
The Next Right Thing
Why Makers Struggle to Get Things Done
"I read a line the other day. That i keep thinking about its from wendell berries novel hannah coulter that. I have been quoting a lot from lately. Here's the line. People are living as if they think they're in a movie. They're all looking in one direction toward a better place and what they see is no thicker than a screen. What they see is no thicker than a screen. I'd love to know what wendell berry had mind when he wrote that or rather what the character. Hannah had in mind when she thought it. But i deeply resonated with it. Even though i can't fully explain why. And maybe that's part of what i'm noticing myself over the last several months i'm resonating with a lot of things and holding pieces and parts fragments and flotsam. I'm collecting but i'm not arranging. And i like the collecting collecting as good and necessary collecting as part of what i do. I collect stories. I collect ideas images. Conversations beauty poetry and quotes but collecting is not. Creating collecting is not making to speak plainly. Y'all it's been a minute since i've made stuff and that is true. With two small exceptions one exception is actually this podcast for four years. These ten to fifteen minute podcast episodes have kept me sane crafting something with a bit of a slant something to help create space for your soul and mind to take a breath before we make our next move. I've loved doing this. I will love continuing to do this. But it's not very much content every week. Second as maybe silly as it sounds posts on instagram. Or something that i have continued to create. I don't post every day. But i do post every week and those small squares photos images and captions are form of making for me these days. Sometimes it's the only form. I get do right privately. And of course that counts too but it's inconsistent at best and i hope you don't hear this as a complaint but just a statement of the fax in two thousand nine paul. Graham wrote an excellent essay called schedule managers schedule every now and then i pull it up to read to remind myself no. I'm not crazy. And i haven't lost my creative edge. I've just become accustomed to working in a manner that is directly opposite from how i'm wired now if you've never read the essay. Here's the gist. Paul graham writes that there are basically two types of schedules amaker schedule and a manager schedule. Here's a quote directly from essay. The manager schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book with each day cut into one hour intervals. You block off several hours for a single task if you need to but by default you change what. You're doing every hour when you use time that way. It's merely a practical problem to meet with. Someone finds an open slot in your schedule. Book them and you're done
Be Calm on Ahway Island Bedtime Stories
Fire Truck Tour: A Soothing Story and Meditation for Kids
"Our story today is fire truck. Tour frankie the fire truck rested outside the firehouse. Sunlight sparkled on his bright red sides. Frankie hadn't been that vibrant and a while. And he was loving it. He had been polished and shine inside and out today. Frankie was going to have group of kindergartners on board for a tour. The fire truck felt honored. He wanted the kids to feel safe knowing that he was always ready to help. Frankie watched the road as car after car passed by. He hoped he would see a bus soon and then he saw it. The bright yellow bus turned into the fire station parking lot. One by one the little kindergarteners carefully step down the gigantic steps one. At a time the adults held their hands to help the little ones with this task s. All the children reached the ground. The adult settled them into a line and they waited for instructions. Frankie beeped a friendly. Hello and then. A couple of the kindergarteners began to cry. The firetruck felt surprised. He thought that all kids love to see a fire truck. Then frankie noticed quite a few of them were holding their years in his excitement. The fire truck had forgotten how loud he could be. He decided that he would try to be as quiet as frankie watched kindergarteners and saw that some were jumping up and down feeling excited to see him. Some of the kids were smiling. Feeling happy and content. Some of the kids stepped up on their tippy toes and peaked around the people in front of them. They tried to see as much of the fire truck as they could. And still be in line. These kindergartners were definitely a curious bunch.
On The Ledge
The Silver Dollar Vine, Xerosicyos Danguyi
"This week's show is really devoted to a little delve into one particular plant species the silver dollar vine. Zero six dangle dankali. It's an madagascar native that i picked up a couple of years ago now at the characters world live event and the i've rather fallen in love with this succulent foreign. So i hope you'll indulge me chatting to you about this plot for a few minutes in this episode but you know what it will be so much better if i had my plant in front of you. I'm talking so hang on a minute. I'm just gonna pop into the house and get my silver coin. Be right back just to yourselves. Did you miss me or back. Got my my zero six ios here. And what can i tell you about this plant. There are a lot of plants that reference money on their from plants that have coin shaped leaves like pilot pepperoni oevp's to plants. That are supposed to bring you good luck. In some way like precare aquatic and also the jade tree chrysler of autre but this plant is definitely in the camp of being named after the shape of its leaves because they really do look quite like coins. The mature leaves already quite thick and chunky. I would say there were good almost half a centimeter in depth and they all quite round.
Aviation News Talk podcast
American Airlines to Resume Hiring Pilots This Fall
"But we have more stories of airline hiring in episode one forty two back in march twenty twenty one at the beginning of the pandemic. We've talked about how people training to become. Airline pilots would probably see their plans. Pushback a couple of years but that they should keep working on their certificates and building hours. And now we're seeing that recovery. American airlines according to the story from dallas news dot com is starting to hire pilots again for the first time since the pandemic began. It says american airlines will start hiring pilots again. This fall hoping to add nearly nine hundred aviators by the end of two thousand twenty. Two american said it plans to recall all formerly furloughed pilots back to active status by the end of the summer as well. Americans plans call for hiring about three hundred new pilots by the end of the year in double that number in twenty twenty two trying to make up for the thousand pilots who have retired due to age or who took early retirement during the pandemic. It's pilot plan. Comes as airlines boost schedules in anticipation of the strong summer. Flying season kovic vaccination distribution and fatigue from the virus have traveled buying tickets at levels not seen since before. The pandemic hiring pilots is stark. Change from just a few months ago. When american airline was threatening to furlough more workers without additional government payroll support including eighteen hundred and fifty pilots. The carrier also plans to honor its job offers to pilots hired before the pandemic. But who never made it into training or an american airlines cockpit. The sudden demand for new pilots could put a strain on regional airlines where those pilots are now employed about half of new pilots. American come from one of its regional airlines including envoy. Psa in piedmont. American said it will coordinate with its wholly owned subsidiary regional airlines to make sure the pipeline of new pilots doesn't disrupt flying
Bloomberg Surveillance
The Suez Canal Is Blocked by Container Ship
"Suez Canal. So let me go through some numbers for you because the numbers are important. $9.6 billion worth of traffic a day going through that very, very important waterway. That's according to estimates from the likes of Lloyd's and the estimates around the matter. Ships that are waiting to get through there right now varies for us here. A Bloomberg what we're tracking about 185 vessels. As of yesterday. I think Lloyd's estimating there's about 165. What we need to figure out is What is on the ships and how bad could things get And how bad could things get quickly? So let's do that right now. Without encounter, would McKenzie, vice president
Forever35
Help! My Face is Aging Asymmetrically
"Hi can door love the pod. I'm writing because i'm territory manager for about four years and spend a lot of time in my car driving between many locations like many of us dudakovic. I had not seen photos of myself in quite some time until this weekend in the photo i notice the left side of my face. Driver's side is starting to droop. Slash age more quicker than my right side and it was very noticeable to me. Compared to photos pre covid been working out in the field during this pandemic. I do wear sunscreen. Every day in the summer. I will admit i need to be better during winter. But i'm curious if you have any advice or product rex when only one side slash part of your face slash body is aging faster than the rest realistically. I will be in this job real for at least another few years and only thirty years old any advice would be appreciated. Hope you have a great week. Okay so dory. What are your thoughts. Well i have noticed that. I have more Freckles slash age spots on the left side of my face. ama- driver's side. Yes i am. Also someone who wear sunscreen religiously. But i have noticed this and i'm assuming that that is the cause okay so i had a couple of thoughts one is you said droopy and i wasn't totally sure what you meant but it also made me wonder. Are you sleeping on that side. Because i'd be curious to hear what happens when you start sleeping on your back which is hard if you're not a back sleeper. But it sounds like you might be aside sleeper on your left side. So i can cause the face vaccine caused the face drooping so it might not be just a car. That was my first thought. My second thought is wear sunscreen in the winter where all year round. Don't just wear it in the summer. It should be part of your morning. Skin care routine and you should reapply it throughout the day multiple times. A day ashley since you're in the car so much but don't keep it in the car because it's sensitive to heat. So keep it. In your bag and reapply it. Maybe maybe like every time you get out of the car and get back into the car. Maybe when you get back into the car. You're like okay. Reapply sunscreen keep a powder to power. That's a good idea because that you could keep the car presumably. Yes i like that kate.