The Scoop

As the crypto market matures, owners of “pristine” digital assets will increasingly be able to use their holdings as collateral for an array of financial services, according to Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra.Founded in 2014, crypto wealth management platform Abra closed a $55 million Series C last September led by IGNIA and Blockchain Capital.In this episode of The Scoop, Barhydt explains why the recent Terra blow-up has no impact on crypto’s disruptive potential, and how a new wave of crypto-backed financial products promises to unlock more utility for long-term holders.As Barhydt explains,“Most banks won't recognize crypto — I don't even know any that will recognize crypto when they're trying to figure out your financial status, when you're trying to qualify for a mortgage…”Just last month, Abra announced a partnership with Propy — the company who sold a Florida home for $650,000 using an NFT — allowing crypto holders to apply for loans using their crypto as collateral.While Abra is “not financing homes yet,” allowing long-term crypto holders to use their digital assets as collateral for down payments on property is a sign of maturity for the asset class, according to Barhydt.If crypto can become pristine digital collateral like Barhydt imagines, he believes the implications will be felt around the world:“The banking system knows that I have this much bitcoin, it lends me this amount of money to complete my payments, and that's debited later — that's a much more efficient way to process credit transactions in countries where there is no credit scoring system, which is most countries, so having a kind of digital collateral changes everything.”Episode 44 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra.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 Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

The demise of the Terra blockchain sent a ripple effect throughout the crypto ecosystem last week, as the market absorbed over 80,000 BTC deployed in a failed attempt to keep the UST "stablecoin" pegged 1:1 with the US dollar.“If you’re a market maker and you don’t make money in those kinds of days, then yeah — you’re doing something wrong,” said Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of Wintermute — an algorithmic crypto market maker with nearly $2 trillion in cumulative volume, according to the firm’s website.In this episode of The Scoop, Evgeny Gaevoy recounts the Terra meltdown from a market maker’s perspective, and explains how future decentralized yield-bearing stablecoins can innovate where Terra's UST failed.According to Gaevoy, the 20% annualized yield promised to users who deposited UST into Terra’s Anchor Protocol was more debt than could be paid by the protocol’s revenue:“What was really wrong about LUNA is they had that 20% yield which was coming out of nowhere,” he said. “It was backed by future growth of the protocol, which could have happened, but didn’t.”Although UST has proven to be a failure, Gaevoy thinks an interest-bearing stablecoin is possible, as long as the promised yield is equivalent to the issuing protocol’s revenue. To illustrate, Gaevoy proposed a hypothetical protocol that brings in $500,000 a year in revenue and seeks to raise $5 million through offering interest-bearing stablecoins:“Let's say they have cash flows of $500,000 per year — they can issue $5 million worth of stablecoins with 10% yield, and then suddenly they have $5 million and they can pay this yield because they actually generate this income. So they can offset these interest payments with what they generate from their own protocol — that model can work, and that model I think is really interesting to explore for a lot of protocols.”Wintermute is in the process of launching its own stablecoin, according to Gaevoy, who said the firm “just needs to iron out the regulatory details.”Episode 43 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of Wintermute.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 Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

The Bahamas has turned into an attractive destination for crypto companies looking to set up shop in a jurisdiction with a clear regulatory framework for digital assets — a movement spearheaded by crypto exchange FTX’s announcement to relocate its headquarters to the island nation late last year.In this episode of The Scoop, Ryan Salame, Co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets (FTX’s Bahamian subsidiary), explains why he believes the conference was “an incredible success,” and why he thinks the Bahamas is positioned to become a global hub for the crypto industry.The conference helped to highlight the crypto-friendly nature of the Bahamas, as Salame explains during the interview,“Some of my objectives were to show off the Bahamas as a jurisdiction, to show why we were there, allow the opportunity for companies to send people to see that this is a great place to do business. So that objective was easily hit.”Salame told The Block’s Frank Chaparro that over 20 companies are in conversation with FTX about moving their headquarters to the Bahamas.While the US has yet to solidify its regulatory approach to digital assets, clear legislation in the Bahamas removes the structural uncertainty.As Salame explains, “All of crypto sits under one regulatory body, versus in the US, you're seeing the CFTC and FCC debate.”Salame’s sentiment is shared by former CFTC chair Chris Giancarlo, who gave the regulatory structure for digital assets in the U.S. a “zero” on a scale of 1 to 10 during a panel at the conference. Disclaimer: Beginning in 2021, Michael McCaffrey, the former CEO and majority owner of The Block, took a series of loans from founder and former FTX and Alameda CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. McCaffrey resigned from the company in December 2022 after failing to disclose those transactions.Episode 42 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Ryan Salame, Co-CEO of FTX Digital MarketsListen 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 Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

Bitcoin traded below $30,000 on Monday, amid market uncertainty brought about by the ‘depegging' of UST—an algorithmic stablecoin whose value is supposed to remain equivalent to $1.At publication, UST is trading at $0.92, although the ‘stablecoin’ saw lows of $0.6050 on the Binance UST/USDT trading pair.In this breaking episode of The Scoop, host Frank Chaparro spoke with crypto researcher Mika Honkasalo, who appeared on the podcast to provide a detailed look at how the UST drama is unfolding.As Honkasalo explained, while UST has experienced depegging before, this time around is structurally different:“I think people at first didn't really realize that it would be a real thing, because they had seen something similar before and they didn't realize that the structure of the market had become a lot more averse to UST than it previously had. And I think what you're seeing today is sort of that just escalating or going further.”Although the Luna Foundation Guard announced plans yesterday to support the UST peg with $1.5 billion worth of assets, whether or not UST returns to its peg will likely come down to whether the buyers or sellers win out.As Honkasalo noted during the interview,“Whether or not it maintains the peg today is very much a question of: if the sellers sort of run out of tokens and the buyers have more, the buyers will live to fight another day here in the mid-term.”As for the future fate of Luna and UST, Honkasalo thinks much of its success will rest on macro forces outside of its control.“I think that if the market turns positive, it will be much easier to keep the whole Luna ecosystem going. But if it continues to be more negative than this, the next wave of sells could be even much worse.”Episode 41 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Mika Honkasalo, Crypto Researcher.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 Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

This special bonus episode of The Scoop was recorded live at the Crypto Bahamas conference with Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, the digital payments and infrastructure company behind the popular stablecoin USDC.As data from The Block shows, USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, and its share of the total stablecoin supply has been steadily on the rise.According to Allaire, a primary driver of demand for stablecoins comes from crypto native businesses:“Basically any business that operates in the crypto economy wants to use stablecoins as working capital. Well, these are businesses that also have borrowing needs, these are businesses that want to borrow, and so you want to borrow stablecoins — so there's inherent demand to borrow in that medium of exchange.”It is this demand for stablecoins that creates lucrative yield opportunities for stablecoin lenders in crypto, in the same way that lenders in the world of traditional finance profit from the interest on the money they lend.As Allaire explains, stablecoin borrowers are willing to pay to borrow capital:“Banks get 17 or 20% from consumers for lending the money for credit cards, right? So people pay an interest rate to borrow. Working capital of crypto is stablecoins, there's businesses that want to borrow it, and there you go.”Episode 40 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder & CEO of Circle.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 Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

Founded back in 2011, Blockchain.com recently closed a Series D funding round in March at a valuation of $14 billion, making the crypto company both one of the longest-operating exchanges as well as one of the highest valued in the industry.After spending effectively “zero” on marketing for over a decade, Blockchain.com recently announced a sponsorship deal with the Dallas Cowboys, becoming the first crypto company to ink a deal with an NFL team approved by the league.In this episode of The Scoop, Peter Smith, CEO of Blockchain.com, discusses his company’s upcoming strategy, including IPO rumors and the rationale behind their Cowboys partnership.As he explains during the interview, Smith wants “to work with the biggest and the best,” making the Cowboys the ideal choice for Blockchain.com’s first sports partnership:“When you really study these marketing deals, you're basically looking for who has the biggest fan base, the demographics of the fan base, and then the TV side of it,” Smith said. “We really wanted to work with them because of the fan base and the TV exposure.”Blockchain.com was also in the news in April, when a Bloomberg report circulated suggesting the company is planning an IPO for some time this year. However, when asked about the report, Smith commented that it must have been “a slow news day at Bloomberg.”While Smith believes Blockchain.com “will be a public company someday – and probably sooner than later,” he clarified: “We haven't done anything in the last 60 days that's different than what we've been doing for the last nine months preparing to someday be a public company.”Episode 39 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Peter Smith, CEO of Blockchain.comListen 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 Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

Before Jon Cheesman became the global head of FTX Access — a new division of the crypto exchange founded by billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried which caters to institutional clients – the seasoned market-veteran served as head of forex sales to banks and hedge funds in London at HSBC, spent time as a partner at crypto venture firm Distributed Global and was a VP at Goldman Sachs.Despite having over a decade of professional experience with global financial markets, Cheesman thinks we are currently living through “the most uncertain macro period” he’s ever seen.In this episode of The Scoop, Cheesman discusses the various macro headwinds which have hit the crypto market so far in 2022, and explains why he believes “a good tailwind is often an end of a headwind.”Cheesman contended that tightening monetary policy hurts crypto in the short-term, but it doesn’t affect the value proposition behind crypto:“There's no question that inflation and what that means for central bank policy is a significant headwind for crypto assets in the near term. But, I think people are comfortable to separate temporary cyclicality with longer term structural tailwinds.”Some of the “structural tailwinds” Cheesman thinks are gaining traction include the idea of “the death of fiat currencies” because of central bank activity, and also the recent focus amongst “high net-worth individuals” on being able to lay claim to one’s assets in light of the removal of some Russian banks from the SWIFT payment messaging network. As data from The Block shows, total daily volume rose for BTC/RUB pairs in March.In addition to, “the more structural tailwinds of the supercycle thesis,” Cheesman also believes both extremely high, and low inflation bode well for crypto.Disclaimer: Beginning in 2021, Michael McCaffrey, the former CEO and majority owner of The Block, took a series of loans from founder and former FTX and Alameda CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. McCaffrey resigned from the company in December 2022 after failing to disclose those transactions.Episode 38 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Jon Cheesman, Global Head of FTX Access.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 Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

The Blockchain Association — a trade association that lobbies US politicians on behalf of the crypto industry — saw explosive growth in 2021, thanks in part to the controversy surrounding the crypto tax reporting provisions that were included as part of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that went through Congress last year.In this episode of The Scoop, Kristin Smith, Executive Director of the Blockchain Association, appears on the show for a record-breaking fifth appearance (pulling ahead of FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried by one) to explain the crypto-friendly momentum that she sees building among American politicians.According to Smith, there are three main reasons why the crypto lobbying industry is gaining influence in Washington:“Between the professionals on the ground, the political giving, and the people back at home that care about this space, the crypto industry is in a much, much better position than we've ever been to date.”Although total US crypto trade association lobbying decreased from $1,034,663 in Q4 of last year to $917,406 in Q1 of 2022, the Blockchain Association increased their Q1 lobbying efforts from $540,000 to $590,000 — over 60% of the industry total for the quarter.Relative to the total crypto market cap — which peaked at just over $3 trillion last November — the amount of money being directed towards crypto lobbying may seem low. But according to Smith, “the amount of money it takes to influence Washington is laughably small.”In the US, direct donations to candidates are limited to $2,900 per election, or $5,800 per cycle. Although they are limited in size, direct donations carry weight with politicians because the funds go directly to the campaign, says Smith.Episode 37 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Kristin Smith, Executive Director at The Blockchain AssociationListen 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 Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

Founded in 2015, crypto-native VC firm CoinFund has spent the past year bolstering its leadership with talent from the world of traditional finance, including Chris Perkins — a former executive at Citigroup — and Christopher Giancarlo, the former CFTC chair.CoinFund’s hiring of Chris Perkins as the firm’s new President is part of a larger exodus of talent from Citi towards digital asset companies, as reported by The Block.In this episode of The Scoop, CoinFund’s President Chris Perkins and CEO Jake Brukhman break down the recent personnel updates at CoinFund, and explain why the combination of crypto-natives and experienced executives from traditional finance are key to pushing blockchain technology to the point of mass adoption.While Brukhman and Perkins believe outsiders from traditional finance can help crypto projects scale, that is not to say that all crypto projects are eager for VC firms to get involved.As Perkins mentioned during the interview: “Crypto is all about community, and you really have to work to navigate that community to understand the founders and to help them grow.”While the crypto community can be nuanced compared to the world of traditional finance, Perkins believes the allure of working with the burgeoning digital asset industry is strong enough to continue to draw in talent:“We're effectively in the process of giving birth to a brand new asset class. And it's just so incredibly exciting being a pioneer, being on the cutting edge. For those of us who are wired like that, it's kind of obvious why you'd want to transition into this space.”Episode 36 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Senior Fintech Reporter Lucy Harley-McKeown, and Chris Perkins, President and Jake Brukhman, CEO & Founder of CoinFund.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 Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

In this episode of The Scoop, Framework co-founders Michael Anderson and Vance Spencer sat down with host Frank Chaparro to explain their new fund’s investment thesis which centers around the idea that blockchain gaming is “getting to the point of mass-market appeal.”As Anderson explained during the interview, the combination of AAA quality game design and in-game ‘play-to-earn’ economies is the key to mass adoption:“That combinatorial effect is the transition that we predict will move from ‘play-to-earn’ into ‘play-and-earn’ where it’s more that you want to be playing the game because it’s a really fun and engaging game. You get to compete at the highest levels, and you get to play in the economy in the same ways that you get to with Axie.”Despite surging in popularity in 2021, the ‘play-to-earn’ game Axie Infinity has recently seen declining activity, something exacerbated by a $600 million hack earlier this year.According to the Framework co-founders, the remedy to the complexities and risks of blockchain gaming is in custodial solutions — another big theme of their new fund which the two co-founders hope will lead to mass adoption.As Spencer explained:“All of the game loops, all of the things that are super important to these game developers, break without these custodial experiences. And so this is going to be the kind of paradigm through which all of the people will initially come in.”Framework Ventures isn’t the only VC firm that sees blockchain gaming as crypto’s next major development: South Korean VC firm Hashed also shared with The Scoop how they are betting big on gaming with their own $200 million fund deployed last December.Episode 35 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Michael Anderson & Vance Spencer, cofounders of Framework Ventures.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 Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross RiverFireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.About Coinbase PrimeCoinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.About Cross RiverCross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.