The Scoop

Imagine a world with not just a few thousand cryptocurrencies, but billions of them.That's Rally CEO Kevin Chou’s vision. The founder of mobile gaming heavyweight Kabam joined The Scoop's Frank Chaparro to talk about the development of creator coins, which are blockchain-based tokens that are tied to the social capital of a person.“We thought about… if you have instead of just thousands of tokens in the world, but you have millions of tokens, tens of millions of tokens, a billion tokens at some future point in time, how do you create a world where people can easily exchange that value?”To be sure, it’s early days for Rally. The firm has onboarded approximately 160 creators, and that number is growing, with a community that spans athletics, art, and music.Rally is currently working with musicians like Portugal. The Man, as well as streamers, gamers, celebrities, athletes, and others to create their own fungible tokens via their network.According to Rally, the decentralized $RLY Community has raised $108 million to date for its community treasury. The project is offering a platform for creators to issue their own 'creator coins' that allow them to engage directly with fans and offer bespoke incentives — thereby giving them the power to “own their economic destiny," as Chou puts it.But the vision is much broader, according to Chou, who said in the interview:“How do we eventually think about a world where more and more people choose to create their online identity, reputation and financial wherewithal all on a blockchain. And that's kind of the world that we're trying to solve here on Rally.”Chou also discusses: Rally's plan to create network rewards for creators How creators are earning significant income already with Rally How Rally aims to work with regulatory commissions across the globe Episode 40 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Kevin Chou, CEO of Rally. Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, 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 Eventus, Kraken, and ExodusEventus is the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Eventus offers a powerful, award-winning trade surveillance platform that is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. The company’s rapidly growing client base relies on Eventus’ responsive support and product development teams to overcome its most pressing regulatory challenges.About KrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.About ExodusExodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface. Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control. Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you’re ready to go. 

Tom Farley, in many respects, was early to crypto. The 45-year-old — who is best known for his time as the head of the New York Stock Exchange — vividly recalls a conversation with early Coinbase employee Dan Romero, who connected him Coinbase co-founder and fellow Duke alumnus, Fred Ersham. "So I met with Fred and was blown away by what they were doing and agreed to put ten million dollars on behalf of the New York Stock Exchange into Coinbase," Farley said on the most recent episode of The Scoop. He made that investment in 2013. Fast forward to 2021: Farley has officially gone full crypto, announcing last week that he would join EOS-backed crypto exchange Bullish as its CEO following the completion of a SPAC deal that would merge the company with Far Peak, the SPAC company Farley joined after his tenure at NYSE.On this episode of The Scoop, Farley joins The Scoop's Frank Chaparro to discuss the deal, which is expected to be valued at a whopping $9 billion. Farley will enter a crowded market with well-placed competitors like Coinbase, which recently went public at a valuation above $50 billion. Bullish aims to win over clients with a blended market structure that borrows from the DeFi world and centralized exchange space, Farley explained. “Bullish is really tipping our hat to the successful use of liquidity pools and automated market makers, and it's combining them with a CeFi market structure," Farley said.Farley also unpacks: His journey into the crypto Rabbit hole The inside story on how the Far Peak/Bullish deal executed The benefits and drawbacks of going public via a SPAC  How SPAC projections can be problematic for investors  Bullish's blended market structure and the benefits automated market makers add to an exchange platform Episode 39 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Former NYSE President and Incoming CEO of Bullish, Tom Farley. Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, 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 Eventus, Kraken, and ExodusEventus is the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Eventus offers a powerful, award-winning trade surveillance platform that is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. The company’s rapidly growing client base relies on Eventus’ responsive support and product development teams to overcome its most pressing regulatory challenges.About KrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.About ExodusExodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface. Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control. Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you’re ready to go.

China banning bitcoin has happened so many times it’s become a meme at this point.But with this latest crackdown on China-based miners, there might be no coming back, says The Block’s Wolfie Zhao.“I think the crackdown on bitcoin mining has never been serious. There were a lot of talks in 2018-2019 but there wasn't anything seriously enforced. But this time it seems like there's no way to go back.”On the most recent episode of The Scoop, Wolfie Zhao, Asia Editor at The Block, explained to host Frank Chaparro how the most recent ban is tied to sustainability concerns within the government. As Zhao put it:“So there is the financial side that is cracking down: Banks are cutting funding channels for OTC desks. The other side is the energy angle, which is cracking down on bitcoin miners. That’s why we see Shenzhen shutting down power supplies to bitcoin mining farms… So obviously when the state council made the comment about cracking down on Bitcoin mining, they didn't say we're just going to crackdown on big companies that are using fossil fuel power.""They just said we want to crackdown," Zhao continued. Zhao and Chaparro also explore:  The impact of the Chinese miner exodus on the bitcoin network How one region tried to buck the broader crackdown Why the US now has a better business environment for bitcoin miners The biggest misconceptions about bitcoin mining in China  Why the mining crackdown is not just an ESG issue For a detailed timeline of China’s crackdown on mining, check out Zhao's full report.Episode 38 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and The Block's Asia Editor Wolfie Zhao. Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, 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 Eventus, Kraken, and ExodusEventus is the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Eventus offers a powerful, award-winning trade surveillance platform that is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. The company’s rapidly growing client base relies on Eventus’ responsive support and product development teams to overcome its most pressing regulatory challenges.About KrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.About ExodusExodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface. Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control.Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you’re ready to go.

It’s no secret that investors find themselves in a low-yield environment. And that backdrop is forcing investors to explore DeFi.That’s part of the logic behind the recently announced Compound Treasury, a new company that allows investors and firms to access the yields on Compound without engaging directly with the blockchain.On this episode of The Scoop, Compound Labs’ Founder Robert Leshner unpacks how institutional flows hunting for yield are finding their way to DeFi — and how he sees Compound Treasury playing a role facilitating that migration.“Compound Treasury is what we hope is an embodiment of this, where we can source the yields from the compound protocol and pass it to institutional customers and abstract away all of the nuance of interacting with smart contracts and managing the flow of funds." Leshner predicted that over time, DeFi and traditional finance will become more intertwined.“I think over time, yields will converge,” he noted. Until then, fintechs will look to services like Compound Treasury to juice yields which have been on a downward spiral. Wealthfront — which at one point offered a return of 2.5% APY for cash accounts — currently offers 0.10% APY. Robinhood offers 0.30%.There are a number of factors that are playing into high DeFi yields, including the existence of “natural risk premiums” in DeFi compared to traditional technical risks in legacy finance. He posited how DeFi could prove to be more resilient against risk relative to traditional financial systems in the long run:“You have what I would call ‘natural risk premiums’ that exist in DeFi that don't exist in traditional markets. The best being technical risk. So technical risk is the risk that the protocol itself just breaks in an unexpected way. Now, longterm, DeFi is safer infrastructure than anything in traditional markets. The reason being a smart contract when it's immutable, if it works, it'll work forever.”Episode 37 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Compound Labs' Founder Robert LeshnerListen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, 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 Eventus, Kraken, and ExodusEventus is the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Eventus offers a powerful, award-winning trade surveillance platform that is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. The company’s rapidly growing client base relies on Eventus’ responsive support and product development teams to overcome its most pressing regulatory challenges.About KrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.About ExodusExodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface.Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control.Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you’re ready to go.

Anthony Scaramucci — the New York financier and former White House official — first jumped into the crypto fray at the end of last year. Now, Scaramucci is going all in. During the latest episode of The Scoop, the Skybridge Capital founder walks listeners through his journey to bitcoin. Skybridge first began investing in BTC at the end of last year. "We have a full commitment to crypto," he remarked.Since then, Skybridge has thrown its hat in the bitcoin exchange-traded product ring and also plans to launch an ETF that has exposure to publicly traded cryptocurrency companies.Indeed, Skybridge is one of a number of U.S. companies vying to go to market with a bitcoin ETF. But the Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to give the nod to such a product, and the proposed ETF that's furthest along in the process — put forward by asset management company VanEck — is now the subject of an additional comment period. Other companies, like NYDIG, Fidelity and Cathie Wood's ARK Invest, are among those pursuing bitcoin ETF launches.Skybridge also has plans to launch a private Ethereum fund."July 1st, we're launching a private Ethereum fund. We’ll then file for an ETF for Ethereum. Again, it is anybody's guess when those things will be going," he said.Scaramucci went on to say:"I can say — which is public information — that we did file for an ETF related to Bitcoin. We also have a UIT with a company out of Wheaton, Illinois, called First Trust… as we're speaking, we're making an announcement on an ETF for a digital innovation fund that has some great publicly traded assets that we think are geared related to [Ethereum], related to Bitcoin, but also the other coins."Scaramucci believes he can lean on his Wall Street chops for product adoption. He cited Morgan Stanley’s buy-in to SkyBridge’s digital asset portfolio as another example of Wall Street’s appetite for Bitcoin. “Morgan Stanley is a very big part of our business."Episode 36 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and SkyBridge Capital's Anthony Scaramucci.Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, 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 Eventus, Kraken, and ExodusEventus is the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Eventus offers a powerful, award-winning trade surveillance platform that is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. The company’s rapidly growing client base relies on Eventus’ responsive support and product development teams to overcome its most pressing regulatory challenges.About KrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.About ExodusExodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface.Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control. Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you’re ready to go. 

Crypto venture investing is heating up. In 2021, VCs poured $3.18 billion into crypto startups in Q1 2021, an increase from $1.1 billion in Q1 2020. On this episode of The Scoop, Vanessa Grellet, CoinFund’s newly joined Head of Portfolio Growth, joins the show for a discussion on the current state of the crypto venture capital market.“If you compare the deal flow of crypto compared to private equity and hedge funds and the general space, it's still small. And I think there's a few cycles right now. We see the products getting product markets, trade and adoption with consumers. So you see a big deal flow of the more mature series coming up and institutional investors really getting interested here. And then innovation continues at a very rapid pace in the space,” she told The Scoop's Frank Chaparro.Grellet, who previously led strategic initiatives for Ethereum at Consensys, also walked us through some of the investment opportunities CoinFund is eyeing. She touched specifically on NFTs and the metaverse — referring to a convergence of physical and digital lives in a digital space. Grellet is bullish that certain groups will begin spending more time in the digital world, buying up digital land, collectibles, and other NFTs. “[We’re] having digital first generations who are going to live in the Metaverse, who are buying land, who are buying clothes, who are buying experiences there, it creates almost like a second huge market for consumer goods and experience,” she said.(CoinFund is known for its presence in the NFT market, having previously invested in Genies, Upshot, and other NFT groups.)Grellet also teased an upcoming announcement from CoinFund on their new vehicle “Metaversal,” which will help capture consumer interest in NFTs in the metaverse. Episode 35 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and CoinFund's Head of Portfolio Growth Vanessa Grellet. Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, 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 Eventus, Kraken, and ExodusEventus is the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Eventus offers a powerful, award-winning trade surveillance platform that is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. The company’s rapidly growing client base relies on Eventus’ responsive support and product development teams to overcome its most pressing regulatory challenges.About KrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.About ExodusExodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface.Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control.Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you’re ready to go.

Bitcoin mining continues to make headlines this week as China ramps up its clampdown on the long-running — and once-dominant — sector.In the latest episode of The Scoop podcast, Amanda Fabiano — who leads Galaxy Digital’s mining business — explained exactly what is happening in China, noting that authorities there recently ordered bitcoin mining projects to close in the southwest province of Sichuan.However, this could provide a bull case for North American mining, as miners are pushed out of China in search of areas with cheaper sources of energy like Kazhakstan.“A lot of people have built lives there on Bitcoin mining. They were the first people who dove into how to set up these large mining facilities. They have been holding the Bitcoin network up and running it forever. So I genuinely feel for the groups that have been working on that... On the other side, I think it's really bullish for North American mining. And I also think it's a testament to how the Bitcoin network is so resilient. An entire country just banned Bitcoin mining that is supposedly accounting for the largest hash distribution in the world. And yet the Bitcoin network continues on.”Rising concerns about curbing the energy consumption in bitcoin mining in China have also lead to ESG initiatives in the hopes of producing sustainable mining solutions.But the promise of a sustainable coin seems like one too good to be true. Fabiano dispels some of the misconceptions around bitcoin mining and what it really looks like for a coin to be mined with renewable energy.“So when we think about the amounts of electricity, for example, that's lost in energy end transmission and distribution it's 19 times that of the Bitcoin network. And the energy footprint of always-on electrical devices in America is 12.1 times that of the Bitcoin network," Fabiano said, adding:"But what we always hear is how Bitcoin is ruining the world. We don't care about how your toaster being left on is ruining the world because people don't care that much about it. I think it's really easy to pick on bitcoin’s energy consumption because it is so transparent."This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Eventus, Kraken, and ExodusEventus is the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Eventus offers a powerful, award-winning trade surveillance platform that is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. The company’s rapidly growing client base relies on Eventus’ responsive support and product development teams to overcome its most pressing regulatory challenges.About KrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.About ExodusExodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface.Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control. Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you’re ready to go. 

The slump in prices across the cryptocurrency market has hit DeFi hard. On this episode of The Scoop, The Block's Mika Honkasalo walked us through The Block's Data Dashboard to illustrate the impact of the decline in retail interest across non-custodial trading venues. The most notable area of weakness is demand for trading with leverage on decentralized derivatives venues such as Perpetual Protocol, which are "more reflexive versions of DEX's themselves," according to Honkasalo. "And this is where the trade volumes have really dropped off—almost 80 to 90 percent."DEX volumes on venues like Uniswap and Sushiswap have held up a bit better, but are down around 50%, according to Honkasalo. Still, there are some areas of growth despite the overall market doldrums. Lending protocols, for instance, have seen growth recently. Outstanding Aave debt has surged and clocked in fresh all-time highs earlier this month. Honkasalo ties this to a thirst for dollars in the market. Yearn is another example "of where the money is going," Honkasalo added. According to the Data Dashboard, total value locked in Yearn vaults hit an all-time high above $5 billion this month. Looking to the future, Honkasalo said that it will be interesting to watch how technical improvements in DeFi help sustain future periods of price appreciation, noting that the most recent cycle was stunted by scaling limitations."Ethereum ran into this problem where no one could really use Ethereum when it was really really popular, and now that we have these layer two solutions coming up like Arbitrum and Optimism, it may be that the last time was really the last time where as soon as activity picks up it becomes immediately way too expensive for users, and that's the path to the excitement dying down," he said. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Eventus, Kraken, and ExodusEventus is the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Eventus offers a powerful, award-winning trade surveillance platform that is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. The company’s rapidly growing client base relies on Eventus’ responsive support and product development teams to overcome its most pressing regulatory challenges.About KrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.About ExodusExodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface.Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control. Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you’re ready to go. 

Bitwise, the $1 billion-plus crypto asset management firm, announced a Series B funding round to further advance its index and fund products on Wall Street.With the raise, Bitwise became the latest startup in the digital asset industry to raise fresh capital amid a period of heightened interest from institutions and their clients.In this episode of The Scoop, Bitwise co-founder and CEO Hunter Horsley explained how the industry is creating access for new classes of investors. In Horsley’s view, traditional portfolio managers and financial advisors remain an untapped market for the nascent crypto asset management industry. In terms of the volatility, Hunter sees this as a positive. For Bitwise, volatility means the opportunity for financial advisors to enter the cryptocurrency market by adopting crypto as another asset class in a client or portfolio’s diversification strategy.“The volatility of crypto is a magical gift for a financial advisor. What do I mean by that? If you're an individual who downloads one of the incredible apps that you have today, you see this jagged price chart, this twenty-four-hour price chart. Right. It's very scary, prone to emotional trading. And that's the scary version of volatility. If you're a financial advisor constructing a portfolio that you want to have certain low correlations, you want to have a certain Sharpe ratio, you want to balance across different asset classes. Well, in that case, crypto volatility is actually very useful.”Looking back to Bitwise's latest round, the startup managed to attract notable backers. Indeed, some of the investors involved in raising the Series B round were industry heavy-hitters.As Horsley put it:“[The Series B Funding was] collected by Elad Gil, one of the most accomplished technology investors, Electric Capital, one of the leading crypto venture capital firms and some renowned Wall Street investors; Dan Loeb's Third Point, Daniel Ochs Willoughby, Louis Bacon’s Moore Strategic Ventures, Henry Kravis, Stanley Druckenmiller and [Bridgewater CEO] Dave McCormick.”This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Eventus, Kraken, and ExodusEventus is the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Eventus offers a powerful, award-winning trade surveillance platform that is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. The company’s rapidly growing client base relies on Eventus’ responsive support and product development teams to overcome its most pressing regulatory challenges.About KrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.About ExodusExodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface.Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control. Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you’re ready to go. 

Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer for the Human Rights Foundation, is excited about the implications of El Salvador's adoption of Bitcoin.Last week, Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, sparked shockwaves across the bitcoin community with his Miami conference announcement of a proposed bill to declare bitcoin as legal tender in the country and mandate its acceptance as a means of payment. Earlier this week, the bill was formally introduced and then signed into law. During a new episode of The Scoop, Gladstein explained what's happening in El Salvador and the ramifications from a domestic and international human rights perspective. Gladstein pointed out that it's significant that El Salvador opted for bitcoin versus building a digital currency the government could have more control over. Gladstein also unpacked what the move means for bitcoin’s role as a form of money. While major Wall Street firms have invested in bitcoin over the last year in part for its use case as digital gold — an inflation hedge — Gladstein says that bitcoin’s role as a quick, borderless payments vehicle is becoming increasingly important. Developments like El Salvador making bitcoin legal tender and advancements in the build-out of Lightning, a bitcoin scaling project, are fueling that shift, according to Gladstein. “Most people don't think bitcoin is money, but what if it was actually turning into money? What would that look like? What would that seem like?... And that's literally what we're watching unfold," he said during the interview, noting:“[Bitcoin] has these remarkable properties that allow it to enable connections between people in different places in the world. So I guess my argument is that we're kind of entering this next narrative phase of Bitcoin, what we perceive it to be, and it being enacted or adopted by a country not as an asset necessarily on the central bank balance sheet, but as legal tender.”As for what this means for the people of El Salvador, specifically, Gladstein said that it will help bank many unbanked citizens. “70 percent of the country doesn't have a bank account, but more than 50 percent of the country has Internet access. So there is a significant overlap there of people whose lives are being changed as a result of this.”This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Eventus, Kraken, and ExodusEventus is the leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance, transaction monitoring and market risk solutions. Eventus offers a powerful, award-winning trade surveillance platform that is easy to deploy, customize and operate. Eventus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments and supports many of the industry’s leading crypto exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini, ErisX and OSL. The company’s rapidly growing client base relies on Eventus’ responsive support and product development teams to overcome its most pressing regulatory challenges.About KrakenWhether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.About ExodusExodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface.Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control. Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you’re ready to go.