On The Brink with Castle Island – Details, episodes & analysis

Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• Quantum risk again
• Are banks filled with spooks?
• The trouble with Taproot addresses
• Microstrategy's dollar reserve
• Kalshi is going on chain
• Prediction market predicaments
• Are insiders monetizing Google search information on Polymarket?
• Are prediction markets insider trading machines by definition?
• DAT activist fights
• Vanguard adds Bitcoin ETFs
• House Financial Services Committee releases their final report on OCP2.0
• What's going on with leverage in crypto?
• Are AI agents going to start stealing crypto?
• Is Eliezer Yudkowski to be trusted?
• AI is going to usher in the golden age of fraud

Stepan, founder of Squads, sits down with Wyatt on today's episode. In this discussion:

• Squads' evolution from a DeFi-facing product to servicing a broader range of companies' asset treasury needs.
• What are the pain points of local small-medium businesses?
• What is driving the gradual global movement from local currencies into USD stablecoins?
• The appetite for safe yield across user types.
• Other traditional digital banking players and how they are evolving with technology.
• How the stablecoin trend impacts governments.
• What happens to local banks?

Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• Old fashioned crime is back
• Quantum risk to Bitcoin
• More outcry in Washington over the Democratic edits to market structure
• CZ gets a presidential pardon 
• Federal Reserve announces a payments charter 

Matt and Nic are back after a week off. In this episode:

• Southern District of New York grants Coinbase's appeal in their case against the SEC
• The Governor of the Czech national bank is considering Bitcoin in their reserves
• Do Kwon is extradited to the US
• E-trade is launching crypto trading
• The FDIC is forced by a court to further un-redact documents Coinbase asked for in a FOIA request
• We cover the FDIC's Pause Letters

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• Fidelity Digital Assets, 2025 Look Ahead
• Bitwise, Benchmark Survey of Financial Advisor Attitudes Toward Crypto Assets
• Nick Anthony, Fair Access to Banking

Dana Syracuse and Josh Boehm of Paul Hastings LLP join the show. In this episode we discuss:

• The common legal and regulatory considerations that are encountered by companies in the digital asset industry.
• Common pitfalls that entrepreneurs in this ecosystem should avoid.
• The state of the stablecoin industry and the regulatory considerations in this category.
• Potential changes ahead in 2025 on how digital assets are regulated in the United States.

To learn more about Paul Hastings and their fintech and digital asset practices visit www.paulhastings.com

Matt and Nic are back for an end of year episode. In this episode: 

• Tether invests $775m in Rumble 
• Who are the Rumble shareholders in Trump's admin? 
• Microstrategy seeks approval for more Bitcoin buying
• We review the quantum risk to Bitcoin
• Matt and Nic's predictions for 2025 

Sponsor notes: 

• Coin Metrics, State of the Network's 2024 Year in Review
• In Coin Metrics State of the Network Issue 291, we revisit major stories that shaped the digital asset industry in 2024 with a data-driven lens

Janusz and Red from Bitcoin Layers join the show. In this episode: 

• Innovation on Bitcoin, previously and now
• Technology vs consumer adoption
• The future of BTC use cases

More about Bitcoin Layers

Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: 

• Nic comes out against the SBR on Bloomberg
• More Prometheum nonsense
• MicroStrategy acquired an additional 15,350 BTC for roughly $1.5 billion, bringing the company's total holdings to 439,000 BTC. Microstrategy was also added to the Nasdaq 100  this week, which will lead to the stock's inclusion in several large ETFs including Invesco's QQQ.
• Anchorage Digital has received New York BitLicense approval, enabling them to offer digital asset custody and trading services to more customers in the state such as RIAs and other institutional asset managers.
• The US Senate scrapped a vote to renominate SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw in response to immense backlash from the crypto community, led by Coinbase-backed non-profit Stand With Crypto, for Commissioner Crenshaw's treatment of the digital asset industry.
• A Texas state representative, Giovanni Capriglione, introduced a bill for the state to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
• Riot Platforms, the publicly traded Bitcoin miner, acquired 667 BTC this week for $67.4 million to add to their balance sheet, bringing their total holdings to 17,429 BTC.
• The NFT collection CyberKongz announced they had received a Wells Notice from the SEC.
• A California judge sided with Coinbase in a suit brought by BiT Global over the exchange's delisting of wBTC. Coinbase had recently moved to remove the asset, a tokenized version of BTC tradeable on Ethereum-based networks, following BiT Global, a custodian closely affiliated with Tron founder Justin Sun, assuming custody services for wBTC.

Sponsor notes: 

• Coin Metrics, State of the Network's Q4 2024 Mining Data Special
• A quarterly update on Bitcoin mining in Q4 2024

Wyatt sits down with Reforge VC's Alex Lin. In this episode:

• Alex's interdisciplinary road into crypto
• Innovation in blockchain infrastructure
• Crypto-powered consumer applications

Learn more about Reforge, a blockchain and frontier tech investment firm.

Rodrigo Seira, Special Counsel at Cooley and Ron Hammond, Director of Government Relations at The Blockchain Association join the show. In this episode we discuss:

• The 2024 election and the impact of the crypto vote.
• Executive branch actions to keep an eye on in 2025.
• Potential SEC related actions that would impact the digital asset market.
• The future of Staff Accounting Bulletin 121.
• Where digital asset legislation fits into the 2025 legislative priorities.
• Stablecoin legislation.
• Market structure legislation.

To learn more about Cooley visit:

www.cooley.com

To learn more about The Blockchain Association visit:

www.theblockchainassociation.org