The Scoop

After years of anticipation and development, the Ethereum blockchain is finally on the verge of transitioning its consensus mechanism from proof-of-work to a more energy-efficient mechanism known as proof-of-stake.According to a blog post from The Ethereum Foundation, switching the consensus mechanism of the blockchain is like changing the engine of a spaceship, and in just a few days, it will be “time to hot-swap the new engine for the old mid-flight.”In this special Ethereum Merge edition of The Scoop, Lex Sokolin, head economist at leading Ethereum development company ConsenSys, examines the implications of Ethereum’s Merge for the future of the network. During the discussion, Sokolin explains why the switch will help improve the reputation of web3 outside of the crypto space — particularly with those who prefer ESG investments.A long-standing criticism of cryptocurrency technology singles out the amount of energy required to power the underlying blockchains. According to Sokolin, the fact that Ethereum is set to reduce its energy consumption by roughly 99.95% will help alleviate this concern:“I think removing the objection around ESG is very meaningful because it does change culturally some of the value proposition of Ethereum to those communities who take really seriously these issues around electricity consumption and impact.”By removing ESG concerns, Sokolin hopes more people in the world will be able to see the potential for web3 technology, without having to worry about negative externalities.As Sokolin explains,“A lot of how people align with web3 and crypto is through idealistic storytelling about what the world could be, and it's really important to be open minded and have a kind of hope for what new platforms can create.”Episode 84 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Tim Copeland and ConsenSys Head Economist Lex Sokolin.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron, Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout TronOn August 1st, 2022, Poloniex launched a faster and more stable trading system along with a brand new user interface. Poloniex was founded in January 2014 as a global cryptocurrency trading platform. With its world-class service and security, it received funding in 2019 from renowned investors, including H.E. Justin Sun, Founder of TRON. Poloniex supports spot and margin trading as well as leveraged tokens. Its services are available to users in nearly 100 countries and regions with various languages available. For more information visit Poloniex.com.About ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com.

Hxro Network (pronounced “hero”) raised $34 million in a token round in November to help advance the platform’s vision of building a decentralized derivative platform on Solana.Now, Hxro is on the cusp of launching USDC collateralized markets, which will mark the first time users are able to trade derivatives products using collateral with real value.In this episode of The Scoop, Hxro co-founder and CEO Dan Gunsberg joins host Frank Chaparro to unpack the idea behind the Hxro protocol and to explain how Hxro hopes to solve liquidity problems that currently exist in the decentralized derivative space.According to Gunsberg, the technology underlying Hxro Network allows anyone to create a decentralized derivative product:“Effectively anybody will be able to come and create any type of derivative product on Hxro Network’s protocol… the core protocol is something called ‘Dexterity,’ and the idea of it is that it’s really just the generalized architecture for the payoff function and the accounting mechanisms of a derivative.”Not only does Hxro allow users to build any type of derivative product, “the beauty” of the platform is the way in which it will unify liquidity to create more efficient markets, Gunsberg believes.Gunsberg explains,“Once those markets are created, they all exist in the base layer protocol and then any application can tap those markets… so what you end up with is this unification of liquidity across many applications and many users, that all bottoms out into the same marketplace depending on the product.”Episode 83 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Hxro Co-Founder & CEO Dan Gunsberg.Listen and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron, Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout TronOn August 1st, 2022, Poloniex launched a faster and more stable trading system along with a brand new user interface. Poloniex was founded in January 2014 as a global cryptocurrency trading platform. With its world-class service and security, it received funding in 2019 from renowned investors, including H.E. Justin Sun, Founder of TRON. Poloniex supports spot and margin trading as well as leveraged tokens. Its services are available to users in nearly 100 countries and regions with various languages available. For more information visit Poloniex.com.About ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com.

Last time Paolo Ardoino came on The Scoop podcast back in 2019, the USDT stablecoin had a market cap of less than $5 billion.Today, that number has risen to more than $66 billion, according to data from The Block's Data Dashboard.While Ardoino serves as both the CTO of Tether (the issuing company behind USDT), as well as CTO of the crypto exchange Bitfinex, recently he has been focusing much of his attention on developing Holepunch — a fully encrypted platform for peer-to-peer applications.In this episode of The Scoop, Paolo Ardoino shares his vision for the future of peer-to-peer technology, which he believes is in line with "the original ethos of the World Wide Web."According to Ardoino, we already possess the hardware necessary to facilitate peer-to-peer data transfer in a more efficient way than existing centralized platforms allow:"The biggest lie ever is that our hardware, our devices, our iPods, phones don't have the capacity to do great things — actually, they are much more powerful than what we think."While our devices may be powerful, Ardoino suggests that having to route data through centralized servers creates unnecessary latency which limits performance:"I'm talking to you, I'm calling you, and there is no reason why my signal — all my data — should pass through a centralized server. There is today, in 2022, no need for that."The first app to be deployed on the Holepunch peer-to-peer technology is a video calling service named Keet. Whereas centralized video streaming platforms are forced to compress data to facilitate global demand, the direct peer-to-peer connection provided by Holepunch allows Keet to facilitate much higher quality video connections.According to Ardoino,"You have to take a shower before using Keet because we get 4K video from you, and it's not compressed."Episode 82 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Bitfinex CTO and Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron, Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout TronOn August 1st, 2022, Poloniex launched a faster and more stable trading system along with a brand new user interface. Poloniex was founded in January 2014 as a global cryptocurrency trading platform. With its world-class service and security, it received funding in 2019 from renowned investors, including H.E. Justin Sun, Founder of TRON. Poloniex supports spot and margin trading as well as leveraged tokens. Its services are available to users in nearly 100 countries and regions with various languages available. For more information visit Poloniex.com.About ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com.

Earlier this summer, the collapse of Three Arrows Capital (3AC) sent the crypto lending world into chaos. Many lenders suffered heavy losses due to 3AC exposure and some were forced into bankruptcy.BlockFi — a prominent crypto lender that was valued at nearly $5 billion during the height of the bull market — was one of the firms that took a big hit when 3AC collapsed, prompting the company's shareholders to approve a $680 million deal with FTX US that outlines a path to a potential acquisition later next year. In this episode of The Scoop, BlockFi CEO Zac Prince candidly recounted the events surrounding his firm's liquidation of Three Arrows Capital. He also explained his personal philosophy regarding the relationship that a crypto lender should have with its customers. Prince expressed during the interview that he firmly believes that BlockFi's clients should be given priority consideration:"I have a very fundamental belief that in the type of business that Blockfi is, you can't screw over your clients and still have a business, period. That's not an option and that's not something that Blockfi is ever going to do on my watch."When asked directly about Three Arrows Capital, Prince responded,"I also respect that these are still people and I hope that they're doing okay, but there's a whole mountain of legal and potentially civil and criminal things that they'll be dealing with in the foreseeable future."Episode 81 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro and BlockFi Founder & CEO Zac Prince.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron, Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout TronOn August 1st, 2022, Poloniex launched a faster and more stable trading system along with a brand new user interface. Poloniex was founded in January 2014 as a global cryptocurrency trading platform. With its world-class service and security, it received funding in 2019 from renowned investors, including H.E. Justin Sun, Founder of TRON. Poloniex supports spot and margin trading as well as leveraged tokens. Its services are available to users in nearly 100 countries and regions with various languages available. For more information visit Poloniex.com.About ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com.

While NFT projects grew in popularity, so too did brand recognition — and the interest of talent representatives to sign them on.United Talent Agency (UTA) was among the first in August of 2021, when it signed CryptoPunks and Meebits creators Larva Labs, followed by Deadfellaz in April of this year. Other talent representatives got into web3 as well, such as Creative Artists Agency (CAA) signing on the NFT collector 0xb1 in October 2021 and even hiring a Chief Metaverse Officer in August of this year. But why did talent representatives like UTA sign on these NFT brands at all? Why do NFT brands need talent representation? To get to the heart of these questions, MK sat down with UTA's head of web3, Lesley Silverman. Silverman has been at UTA for the past seven years, educating artists on the utility of web3 and helping interested artists launch their web3 brand. Before joining UTA, Silverman worked as a fine arts lawyer, and she says this experience shaped how she lead UTA through the NFT space. Episode 80 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's MK Manoylov and Lesley Silverman, Head of Web3 at United Talent Agency.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron, Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout TronOn August 1st, 2022, Poloniex launched a faster and more stable trading system along with a brand new user interface. Poloniex was founded in January 2014 as a global cryptocurrency trading platform. With its world-class service and security, it received funding in 2019 from renowned investors, including H.E. Justin Sun, Founder of TRON. Poloniex supports spot and margin trading as well as leveraged tokens. Its services are available to users in nearly 100 countries and regions with various languages available. For more information visit Poloniex.comAbout ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com

Plaid, a fintech infrastructure and payments provider aiming to simplify the digital financial ecosystem through a single API, recently announced big crypto players such as Gemini and Binance.US are joining its network of financial institutions.The move is part of Plaid's broader effort to integrate both legacy institutions and crypto service providers into its platform, which was valued at more than $13 billion last year after a $425 million fundraise.In this episode of The Scoop, Plaid's head of UK, Keith Grose, joins host Frank Chaparro to discuss how its integration with crypto platforms is helping bring new users into the ecosystem, and to break down what the future of digital finance will look like.According to Grose, users' digital financial interactions will increasingly be controlled by a single wallet that is able to move seamlessly between different platforms:"You are essentially, as a user, going to have this back end wallet, whether it's your bank account or your crypto wallet, that you control the keys to and you can take wherever you want to use it around the digital world. That's where we're headed."While Plaid is built to cater to a range of digital financial platforms, Grose points out that all financial transactions ultimately come down to trust:"What we're really talking about when you're talking about payments is trust… and I think we're more and more moving to a place where trust is becoming digital, and proving trust online in the digital world is very different than proving trust in a physical, community based system that most of humanity has been in for most of history."Episode 79 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Plaid head of UK/EU Keith Grose.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron, Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout TronOn August 1st, 2022, Poloniex launched a faster and more stable trading system along with a brand new user interface. Poloniex was founded in January 2014 as a global cryptocurrency trading platform. With its world-class service and security, it received funding in 2019 from renowned investors, including H.E. Justin Sun, Founder of TRON. Poloniex supports spot and margin trading as well as leveraged tokens. Its services are available to users in nearly 100 countries and regions with various languages available. For more information visit Poloniex.com.About ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com.

The US has yet to see a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) reach the market, but when a futures-based product got the green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year, issuers were hopeful.Some thought it signified the regulator becoming more comfortable with crypto products and a spot ETF could be on the horizon. But since then, the SEC continued to shoot down application after application on the basis that there aren't sufficient mechanisms to prevent price manipulation in the spot market.Grayscale, which has long desired to convert its flagship GBTC product into an ETF, took issue with this. During the SEC's continued extensions on its application, and after a series of rejections of other similar applications, the firm sent a letter saying the regulator could be violating its own procedures by approving a futures product but refusing to allow a spot-based product. The firm argued that futures are priced based on the underlying spot market, meaning any price manipulation in the spot market would affect futures products.The idea is if the regulator is comfortable with futures, it should be comfortable with a spot-based product.But Grayscale, too, received a rejection weeks later, spurring it to mount a legal challenge in the DC Court of Appeals. Now, it's gearing up to submit its first brief in the case, detailing its qualms with the SEC's rejection of its application.In this week's episode of Policy Scoop, Aislinn Keely sat down with Grayscale's Chief Legal Officer, Craig Salm, to take an in-depth look at the firm's argument."It wasn't a decision that we made lightly, and during the course of that comment letter period, we had a couple of meetings with the Commission to try to work through their questions and the issues presented, lay out the arguments and reasoning why we felt that if they were okay with futures, they should now be okay with spot," said Salm.Episode 78 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Aislinn Keely and Craig Salm, Chief Legal Officer at Grayscale.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron, Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout TronOn August 1st, 2022, Poloniex launched a faster and more stable trading system along with a brand new user interface. Poloniex was founded in January 2014 as a global cryptocurrency trading platform. With its world-class service and security, it received funding in 2019 from renowned investors, including H.E. Justin Sun, Founder of TRON. Poloniex supports spot and margin trading as well as leveraged tokens. Its services are available to users in nearly 100 countries and regions with various languages available. For more information visit Poloniex.comAbout ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com

Fractional — a crypto startup whose tech allows individual non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to be locked in a smart contract, and then 'fractionalized' into fungible digital pieces — is changing its name to 'Tessera.' In addition to the name change, Tessera announced they closed a $20 million Series A earlier this summer in a funding round led by Paradigm.In this episode of The Scoop, Tessera co-founder and CEO Andy Chorlian explains how fractionalized NFTs foster new digital communities, and why 'Tessera' is a more suitable name for the direction of the platform.According to Chorlian, Tessera is helping new communities form by taking 'blue-chip' NFTs that could cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and making them more accessible to the average collector:"It's really just reshaping what it is that's exciting about a particular NFT or owning that NFT — generally more so in like the collecting things that you love and meeting other like minded people and being in interesting communities."The team decided to move away from 'Fractional' — a name that "sounds like a DeFi protocol," according to Chorlian — in favor of 'Tessera' because of the word's dual meaning and resonance with the vision for the platform:"It is the name of a tile used to create mosaic artwork, and the other use… is the idea of a membership pass or an identity card, and that really hit two of the main things that we think our product and NFTs in general are cool and exciting for."Episode 77 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Tessera co-founder and CEO Andy Chorlian.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron, Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout TronOn August 1st, 2022, Poloniex launched a faster and more stable trading system along with a brand new user interface. Poloniex was founded in January 2014 as a global cryptocurrency trading platform. With its world-class service and security, it received funding in 2019 from renowned investors, including H.E. Justin Sun, Founder of TRON. Poloniex supports spot and margin trading as well as leveraged tokens. Its services are available to users in nearly 100 countries and regions with various languages available. For more information visit Poloniex.comAbout ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com

Over the course of the past two decades, Grammy Award-winning DJ, André Allen Anjos (also known as RAC) has noticed a growing trend."There's been a trend since 2005 in the MySpace era, and all of that has been a trend towards sovereignty of an artist, of putting the artists on top," he says.RAC is an advisor to Audius — a decentralized music streaming platform that raised $5 million last September from big names including Coinbase Ventures and Pantera Capital, along with popular artists such as Jason Derulo and Katy Perry.In this episode of The Scoop, RAC and Audius Co-Founder and CEO Roneil Rumburg examine the limitations of centralized music streaming platforms and explain how data ownership in web3 allows artists to redefine their relationship to their fans. Rumburg argues that centralized streaming platforms prevent artists from establishing a direct connection with their fanbase."There shouldn't be this sense of 'platform lock-in' that we have today on Spotify or places like that where, as a creator, you don't really know who your fans are, and you don't have the ability to port that fan base between experiences."RAC has first-hand experience with this problem: while the DJ has 5.5 million followers on SoundCloud, his fanbase is "locked" into the platform. Artists "don't own that connection in any way," he says.Audius is designed to avoid that, according to Rumburg."Our company could go away tomorrow, and all of this would keep working… From the artist's perspective, there's no lock in here. You can take your following and your data that you have here and use it anywhere else."Episode 76 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro, Audius Co-Founder Roneil Rumburg and Grammy award winning DJ and Audius Advisor, RAC.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com

CoinShares — a London-based crypto firm whose operations include asset management, venture capital, and proprietary trading — had exposure to Terra's "algorithmic" stablecoin UST, the collapse of which resulted in a loss of $21 million for the firm's trading unit of the business.In this episode of The Scoop, CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti provides an inside look at how CoinShares navigated Terra's collapse, and why crypto's "private company environment" leads to marketplace uncertainty.According to Mognetti, a lack of standardized disclosure requirements for crypto firms makes it difficult to verify balance sheet details."The opacity despite all the progress we're doing is quite intense, so you don't have as much information as you want."While Mognetti points to Voyager Digital as an example of a crypto company that has fully disclosed the state of its book, he acknowledges this is likely due to Voyager's status as a publicly traded company — for private companies, the disclosure requirements aren't nearly as robust and largely vary by jurisdiction.This leads to uncertainty, Mognetti argued."Even if they tell you they're good, you don't know what they have in the book and against whom they are exposed."Episode 75 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro and CoinShares Co-Founder and CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Chainalysis & IWC SchaffhausenAbout ChainalysisChainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.About IWC SchaffhausenIWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com