The Daily Chain Podcast

Today we chat with Pascal Gauthier - CEO of Ledger, the Bitcoin and Crypto hardware technology company, who recently celebrated their 5th anniversary.  In this episode we discuss patience - we cannot expect the worlds financial system to change over night. It also fair to say that security is a primary concern of those inside and outside of the industry, and how Ledger need to stay on top of the cat and mouse game that is security.  Ledger are preparing themselves for the inevitable tokenisation of all the worlds assets, ranging from digital store of value like Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrency, as well as tokenised energy or securities. We discuss how the end goal is for users to go on their 'merry crypto journey' and perform ancillary functions like trading, lending and staking all from the security of the Ledger hardware wallet.  Ledger are one of the first names you come across once you invest in Bitcoin and crypto, and Pascal is a champion of the space. 

David Belle Plays 4D Chess. He uses his research skills to view macro events and identify areas where the narrative doesn't match up with the data, and makes financial decisions based on this.  David has studied economics since high school and since he came across Trading 212 when studying for his A levels, has always taken part in the markets.  He has used this knowledge and experience to start Macrodesiac - a newsletter with almost 500 subscribers in which readers can take advantage of Davids analytical skills and ability to disseminate information accordingly. Whilst I came across David through my involvement in the Bitcoin and Crypto community, the newsletter covers all aspects of macro economics. David share some interesting viewpoints on centralised banking, centralised currency as well as economic ideologies. Macrodesiac has also been kind enough to offer a special deal for Daily Chain Podcast listeners, so make sure you email me or DM on twitter to take advantage of this once in a lifetime offer. You can find David on Twitter and LinkedIN 

In this episode, I talk with John McAfee about personal responsibility and how the McAfee Dex will eliminate the one weak point of the Crypto universe, the centralised exchange.  Whilst Bitcoin has the first-mover advantage, McAfee believes other projects like the DAI and various privacy initiatives are more technologically evolved than Bitcoin.  Making the argument that whilst Bitcoin is not the best project out there, simple supply and demand economics dictate that Bitcoin will hit his planned trajectory of over $1m per coin.  John factors this to simple maths, and that the likes of Jihan Wu are still putting all of their energy into gaining additional hash power, rather than retiring when they have made enough money.  John also has some interesting viewpoints on who Satoshi Nakamoto maybe, but less than a 1% chance it is Craig Wright. 

In this episode we talk with the Founder of Hasr8 - Whitney Gibbs and MeanHash who is responsible for the development of Hashr8 OS - a cryptocurrency mining platform which is designed by miners, for everyday people who want to get into the industry.  We discuss the evolution of their journeys into Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency and an overview from a high level exactly what Cryptocurrency mining is.  This episode was supposed to be all about mining, however we go on a tangental discussion about what corporations are doing with your data today, and why privacy coins will be very important in the future. I personally learned a lot from this conversation - MeanHash has been involved in Bitcoin from 2014, so has a fundamental understanding of the industry and how it is placed to move forward.

Crypto Cred is an essential follow if you are interested in understanding more about trading and technical analysis. The crypto twitter community is a wonderful but weird place, and Cred has been in the middle of it all.  In this episode, Cred regales us with some interesting stories through-out his time as a member of the community and gives us his thoughts on what Bitcoin is to him - his answer surprised me a little bit. If you want to learn more about trading Bitcoin and other crypto's then his medium and YouTube pages are mandatory visits. You can view Cred's entire back catalogue of lessons and tutorials here  I really enjoyed this episode, and I hope you learn something from this conversation. Thanks again for listening. 

Decred (DCR) is an open-source, Bitcoin fork that places emphasis on development funding, on-chain governance, and consensus mechanisms. Launched in Feb 2016 by the Bitcoin developers behind btcsuite (an alternative full-node Bitcoin implementation written in Go (golang), Decred successfully orchestrated an on-chain user-activated consensus vote, which is emblematic of the project's emphasis on community-driven stakeholder governance. Other features of the project include a hybrid proof-of-work (PoW) proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus voting system, a public proposal platform, smart contracts, cross-chain atomic swaps, and cross-platform wallets. Luke Powell is one of the lead developers and has been working largely on Politea for the last two years. In the episode we discuss the project at a high level, understand how the community gets involved, and how Decred can possibly act as a hedge against Bitcoins possible failure due to varying governance systems.  To learn more about the project, go to docs.decred.org

Sam Bankman-Fried, Founder and CEO — Sam is the CEO of FTX and Alameda Research. FTX is a crypto derivatives exchange and Alameda Research is a market maker and liquidity provider that trades between 500mil to 1bil+ per day. Before founding these companies, Sam was a trader on Jane Street Capital’s international ETF desk. He traded a variety of ETFs, futures, currencies, and equities, and designed their automated OTC trading system. Sam graduated with a degree in Physics from M.I.T. In this episode, we talk about Digital Assets in Asia, the new breed of exchange products available at FTX, the trading competition which can be viewed https://ftx.com/#a=1476778 and what needs to happen from a regulatory standpoint for Crypto to go mainstream We also talk about a live trade that can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMZckrBPw38

Crypto Krillin (Twitter handle @LSDinmycoffee) joins me to talk about human nature in trading and investing, Bitcoin is the fastest way to financial independence, learning to read charts from the best and studying fundamentals.  

Jonathan and Simon are the founders of Blockfyre (https://blockfyre.com/) - an educational platform for various Cryptocurrency projects. Blockfyre provide valuable fundamental analysis for existing Crypto projects, as well as insightful details on new IEO's (Initial Exchange Offering)

Alex Libertas is the Founder and CEO of www.thedailychain.com - a resource for all those interested in learning about Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and many more. In this episode, Alex talks about the beginning of his journey into the space, and what it's like to go from absolute novice, to running his own business.