Brian Venturo and Brannin McBee (CoreWeave) on Building an Industrial Scale GPU Cloud (EP.366)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Release Date: 10/31/2022
Sid Powell (Maple) on Maple's Comeback & DeFi Credit Markets (EP.652)
On The Brink with Castle Island
CEO and cofounder joins the show to talk about Maple's huge year so far. In this episode: Syrup and Maple's evolution into an on-chain asset manager Traditional credit players servicing on-chain finance DeFi's strengths and weaknesses relative to traditional markets
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Weekly Roundup 08/01/25 (SEC’s Project Crypto, In-kind ETFs, White House report) (EP.651)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode: The White House publishes their highly awaited crypto report SEC Chair Paul Atkins makes a landmark speech Stablecoin-focused L1s DAT mNAV premia are converging to 1 Figma IPO The SEC embraces tokenized securities, airdrops, token issuance, and DeFi In-kind create and redeem has been authorized for Bitcoin ETFs JPM deepens their partnership with Coinbase Roman Storm verdict is imminent Further reading: Blockworks’ Omid Malekan and Zach Pandl, White House, Paul Atkins, Nic Carter,
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Michael Bentley (Euler) on Euler's Comeback (EP.650)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Wyatt sits down with , the founder of . In this episode: Euler's founding story, infamous security incident, and comeback story How the team and protocol stayed together in the face of immense challenges The value of personal relationships in crypto despite a pseudonymous culture
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Weekly Roundup 07/25/25 (Tether’s GENIUS options, Defending Free Banks, Saylor’s Stretch) (EP.649)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: Defending “Free Banking” from the critics – and why stablecoins are unlike free banks The American Bankers Association doesn’t like new crypto charters Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino announces the company’s plan to launch a new US-based stablecoin this year Strategy announced the plans for the fourth preferred stock offering this week, STRC, or "Stretch." Anchorage Digital, which does hold an OCC banking charter, is a new stablecoin issuance platform. The first stablecoin product will...
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Cyrus Shirazi (Haven) on Better Bookkeeping for Crypto Startups & Beyond (EP.648)
On The Brink with Castle Island
CEO of joins the show. In this episode: R&D tax credits and offering an attractive tax product to early stage companies What on-chain finance needs to fulfill becoming a better ledger for accounting What startups should look for in a tax & accounting partner
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Weekly Roundup 07/18/25 (GENIUS is Law, Clarity passes, narrow banking and GENIUS) (EP.647)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode: The Coldplay concert incident It’s Crypto Week in Washington Talos acquires Coin Metrics Do you need an MTL to run a fantasy football league? GENIUS Act is law pending Trump’s signature Clarity Act passes the House ICO Fairshake raises $141m Grayscale is preparing for an IPO Adam Back’s Bitcoin access vehicle Polymarket beats the allegations Is GENIUS creating a narrow bank system? Governor Waller's comments on stablecoins and banks
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Nikhil Raghuveera (Predicate) on Policy Engines for Blockchains (EP.646)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Wyatt sits down with of to talk policy for blockchain applications. In this episode: How Predicate’s “rules for blockchain transactions” are making on-chain finance more scalable and secure Creating more compliant stablecoin transfer systems suitable to mass financial use cases The future of secure money movement How leading software and financial firms can integrate transaction policies in their workflows
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Weekly Roundup 07/11/25 (New BTC ATH, Crypto Week, Zelensky suit scandal) (EP.645)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode: Bitcoin hits a new ATH and no one is talking about it Grok goes haywire The White House posts chudjak Core Weave looks to buy Core Scientific Stablecoins are going to pay yield anyway Did Zelenskyy wear a suit? How should prediction markets be settled? ICO is coming up Hester Peirce issues a warning on tokenized securities Crypto Week in Congress is coming up Jonathan Gould has been confirmed as Comptroller of the Currency There are new public access vehicles Andreessen wants you to leave Delaware A fundamental...
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Zac Townsend (Meanwhile) on Bitcoin Life Insurance (EP.644)
On The Brink with Castle Island
, the founder and CEO of , joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Zac’s background and the path that led him to start Meanwhile. The mechanics of Bitcoin denominated life insurance. How Meanwhile generates Bitcoin yield. Zac’s views on the evolution of Bitcoin treasury companies. To learn more about Meanwhile visit
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Charles Hamel (Opera MiniPay) on Globalizing Dollar Access (EP.643)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Charles Hamel, Product Director at joins the show. In this episode: Stablecoin habits in emerging markets Prospects for local stablecoins What’s next on the stablecoin horizon
info_outlineCoreWeave's Brian Venturo (CTO) and Brannin McBee (CSO) return to On The Brink for a discussion of their journey through the merge and beyond. In this episode:
- Are they relieved that the merge finally happened?
- Will there be some form of non-Bitcoin PoW in the future?
- Could Ethereum conceivably return to PoW?
- The effect of PoS on ETH’s censor resistance
- What quantity of ETH miners shifted to other PoW chains and what portion went elsewhere?
- What is the best use of capital for former ETH miners now?
- Did the merge really reduce global electricity consumption by 0.2%?
- Brannin’s estimate for precise electricity reduction from the merge
- How feasible is it for former ETH miners to get into GPU clouds?
- How Core Weave built their cloud product
- What it takes to be competitive in the high performance computing sector
- Why the generalized providers of cloud can’t just win when it comes to rendering and ML/AI
- Why the HPC market is exploding right now
- How open source communities behind text and image models contributed to the explosion in use cases
- The importance of Stable Diffusion versus Open AI
- The explosive growth of Stable Diffusion and Stability AI
- How the growth in infrastructure contributed to the emergence of these newer image models
- New directions in AI models like video creation
- Will generative AI be attacked by environmentalists?
- Can cloud data centers handle interruptible loads like Bitcoin miners can?
- How industrial compute will play a role in emerging metaverses
- Use cases Brannin and Brian are excited about
- Why hardware is actually a constraint to the number of metaverse users today
Learn more about CoreWeave here.