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Mitchell Nicholson (DACS Conduit) on leaving central banking for Bitcoin (EP.135)

On The Brink with Castle Island

Release Date: 10/07/2020

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On The Brink with Castle Island

Wyatt sits down with and of In this episode, we cover:  The evolution of yield in DeFi Primitives users want Crypto risk assessment Learn more about

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Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode:  Will stablecoins disrupt credit cards? The US Treasury Advisory Committee drops a report on stablecoins Mastercard and Visa launch stablecoin integrations Movement labs has more scandals Are quantum timelines accelerating? The real risk of quantum to Bitcoin Could a quantum break fix Bitcoin’s security budget? Are any Bitcoin purists left? Circle turns down Ripple’s acquisition offer Machinsky is facing a 20-year sentence Arizona passes an SBR bill  Cambridge releases a new report on bitcoin mining...

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Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode:  Is Bitcoin decoupling? The Fed rescinds anti-crypto letters from 2022 and 2023 Upexi raises $100m PIPE to invest in Solana Cantor, Tether, Softbank and Bitfinex inject $3.6b into 21 Capital, a Bitcoin acquisition vehicle Bitcoin ETFs versus bitcoin acquisition companies Trump is hosting a dinner for $TRUMP holders Charles Schwab wants to launch crypto trading Citi thinks stablecoins could reach $3.7T in supply by 2030  

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Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: We recap Nic’s article on why Signature collapsed Crypto exchange OKX  their plans to expand to the US Kraken  that US equities are now supported on the exchange MANTRA, a layer 1 network focused on RWAs, saw the price of its native token  90% in a matter of hours Global Payments agreed to  Worldpay, a payments processor, for $24 billion from FIS and private equity firm GTCR The US Department of Homeland Security has launched a  into Anchorage,...

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On The Brink with Castle Island

and of join the show to talk stablecoins and institutionalization. In this episode, we cover:  The landscape of stablecoin growth and activity A world with many stablecoins vs few stablecoins Winning/losing companies in the new stablecoin era Impact on the longer tail of altcoins

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, the head of Coinbase Ventures joins the show. In this episode we discuss: The history and rationale behind the launch of Coinbase Ventures. The evolution of the crypto venture category. Areas of focus for Coinbase Ventures. Stablecoins, Crypto/AI and consumer startup category. The regulatory landscape in the United States. Operation Chokepoint 2.0 and the impact on startups. The rise of the Coinbase Mafia. To learn more visit 

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More Episodes

Mitchell Nicholson is the founder of DACS Conduit and formerly an economist at the Bank of Canada. Mitchell's views are his own and not those of the Bank of Canada. In this episode:

  • His path to joining the Bank of Canada
  • Why he chose to start his career in central banking
  • Mitchell's work on the Band of Canada Bitcoin awareness surveys
  • Why the Bank of Canada put resources to the Bitcoin awareness surveys
  • Mitchell's masters thesis on Bitcoin
  • How covering Bitcoin was part of Mitchell's mandate at the Bank of Canada
  • Their reaction to Quadriga
  • How Crypto Twitter helped was useful to Mitchell during his time at the bank
  • What it's like being a Bitcoin enthusiast working at a central bank
  • Crypto penetration among Bank staff
  • How Mitchell applied lessons from traditional finance to his analysis of Bitcoin
  • Mitchell's thoughts on the legitimacy of Tether
  • Comparing the risk profiles of single and multi collateral Dai
  • Lessons that Bitcoiners can take from central banking
  • Whether central banks should be concerned about crypto-dollarization
  • The prospects for CBDCs
  • Why the public sector may not be able to create a true digital cash with strong privacy assurances
  • What a more restricted digital form of central bank money might look like
  • Mitchell's view of the true killer app of the crypto industry
  • Mitchell's new project now that he has left the BoC
  • The one big gap Mitchell has identified in the crypto industry
  • The likely effect of the rise of crypto markets on central banking

Content mentioned in this episode: