PerpTools – How DEXTools Is Building the Full DeFi Trading Stack
The Crypto Conversation
Wael Rajab is the CMO of PerpTools and co-founder and director of DEXT Ventures, the capital arm of DEXTools — one of DeFi's original and most widely used on-chain trading and analytics platforms. With nearly a decade in crypto and a portfolio spanning over 100 investments across 150+ integrated blockchains, Wael has been at the centre of decentralised finance's growth from data dashboard to full trading stack. Why you should listen DEXTools built its reputation as the go-to platform for on-chain token analytics — the place traders head when they want to understand what's happening across...
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Abundant – What If the Most Radical Act Is Giving?
The Crypto Conversation
Andy sits down with Donald Griswold, director of the new indie documentary feature Abundant, and Sheila Dohmann, Chief Marketing Officer at Stuff.io, the decentralized media platform bringing the film to audiences worldwide. Abundant examines generosity, scarcity and what drives the rarest altruists among us — non-directed kidney donors who give a kidney to a complete stranger — and it's being distributed exclusively via blockchain streaming starting March 26th. Why you should listen This conversation cuts to the heart of what's broken in independent film distribution. Donald explains how...
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Themelia – Custom Crypto Indexes
The Crypto Conversation
Jessica Ellerm and Kent Grogan are the co-founders of Themelia, a platform building the next infrastructure layer for crypto investment through custom indexing technology. Jessica comes from a fintech background — including a stint at ASX-listed payments platform Tyro and a superannuation startup she founded and sold — while Kent ran a hedge fund for years before moving into portfolio management and FinTech. Together, they're tackling one of the most underserved problems in digital assets: how do you get sensible, risk-adjusted exposure to a market of 52 million tokens without getting...
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Stormrake – Old School Brokerage for the Digital Asset Era
The Crypto Conversation
Bisher Khudeira is the COO of , a Melbourne-based digital asset brokerage offering best execution trading, institutional custody, and asset management across Bitcoin, digital assets, and tokenized real-world assets. Bisher joins Andy to explain why the brokerage model beats the exchange model for serious investors, what it takes to build a crypto business in one of the most hostile banking environments in the developed world, and why Stormrake is about to plant its flag in Dallas. Why you should listen Bisher has spent a decade in financial services, starting in foreign exchange brokering...
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Solayer – Hardware Accelerated Finance at the Speed of Metal
The Crypto Conversation
Joshua Sum is the Chief Product Officer at Solayer, a hardware accelerated network built to move money at the speed of metal. Joshua joins Andy Pickering to explain how dedicated chip-level infrastructure is pushing blockchain throughput into territory no software-only chain can reach — and why that matters as payments, AI agents, and real-world asset tokenization all converge on the same rails. Why you should listen Joshua's path to crypto ran through direct-to-consumer e-commerce, a founding quant role at Treehouse, and building CollegeDow into the largest university blockchain network in...
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UTEXO – Native USDT Comes Home to Bitcoin
The Crypto Conversation
Viktor Ihnatiuk is the co-founder and CEO of UTEXO, a Tether-backed global settlement network for native USDT and Bitcoin payments, powered by the Lightning Network and the RGB protocol. Viktor joins Andy Pickering to walk through a decade-long journey from Ukrainian fintech to the frontline of Bitcoin infrastructure — and to explain why the world's biggest stablecoin is finally coming back to the chain where it was born. Why you should listen Viktor traces his path from launching Ukraine's first peer-to-peer lending platform and first fintech conference — where he discovered Bitcoin in...
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Open Frontier - The Coalition for Fair Crypto
The Crypto Conversation
Open Frontier Executive Director Erik Balsbaugh and board member Amanda Wick join Andy Pickering for a wide-ranging conversation on crypto, politics, and the future of digital finance. The discussion explores why digital assets are too important to be left to partisan trench warfare, and why the real promise of crypto has less to do with speculation and more to do with reducing fees, expanding access, and breaking the grip of extractive financial intermediaries. Erik and Amanda make the case that this is ultimately a fight about fairness, affordability, and who the financial system is built to...
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Transak - The Crypto On-Ramp
The Crypto Conversation
Andy Werner is VP of Partnerships and Strategy at Transak, one of the world’s leading fiat-to-crypto on-ramp providers. Werner shares his journey through fintech — from big banks to startups — and explains how Transak is building the compliance and payments infrastructure that quietly powers hundreds of crypto platforms globally. While the company operates in what he jokingly calls the “boring” side of crypto, Werner argues that boring is exactly what payments infrastructure should be: seamless, reliable, and invisible to the end user. Why you should listen The conversation dives...
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Veera - The OnChain Neobank
The Crypto Conversation
Andy sits down with SB, CEO and co-founder of Veera, to unpack a bold attempt at one of crypto’s oldest and most stubborn problems: making it usable for normal people. From launching BlackBerrys and building early mobile ad tech, to challenging Netflix with an Asian streaming platform and exiting a travel startup, SB’s winding entrepreneurial path now lands squarely in on-chain finance. The conversation traces how Veera is positioning itself as a true crypto neobank — not just a wallet with a card — and why user experience, not yield or hype, will decide whether crypto ever really...
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New Book - The Intelligent Crypto Investor
The Crypto Conversation
John Hargrave, CEO of Media Shower and author of The Intelligent Crypto Investor, joins the show to unpack a radically calm, Buffett-inspired approach to crypto investing. From wiring money to Belarus to buy Bitcoin in 2013 to nearly losing his business in the 2018 crypto winter, John shares how hard-earned wisdom led him to a disciplined, diversified strategy that blends traditional assets with a carefully sized slice of high-quality crypto — and why this model has quietly outperformed traditional portfolios over the past several years. Why you should listen John traces his origin story...
info_outlineViktor Ihnatiuk is the co-founder and CEO of UTEXO, a Tether-backed global settlement network for native USDT and Bitcoin payments, powered by the Lightning Network and the RGB protocol. Viktor joins Andy Pickering to walk through a decade-long journey from Ukrainian fintech to the frontline of Bitcoin infrastructure — and to explain why the world's biggest stablecoin is finally coming back to the chain where it was born.
Why you should listen
Viktor traces his path from launching Ukraine's first peer-to-peer lending platform and first fintech conference — where he discovered Bitcoin in 2015 — through to building Boosty Labs, a 150-person dev shop that served Coinbase, Bitfinex, Ledger, MetaMask, and WalletConnect. That operation evolved into a venture studio, and a chance meeting with Tether at Bitcoin Prague in 2023 set the stage for what became UTEXO. Viktor explains how he helped push RGB to mainnet, and how a joint venture with Tether was rebranded into UTEXO, which has just closed a $7.5 million seed round co-led by Tether, Big Brain Holdings, and Plan B Ventures.
The conversation digs into what UTEXO actually delivers: instant USDT and Bitcoin settlement at zero transaction cost, with client-side validation privacy baked in through RGB. Viktor breaks down why this isn't USDT arriving on Bitcoin for the first time — it originally launched on OmniLayer back in 2014 — but rather coming home, rebuilt on infrastructure that finally works. He makes the case that Lightning's scalability leaves every other chain behind, and walks through the key use cases UTEXO is targeting: native BTC-to-USDT swaps, new revenue models for wallets through transaction fee monetization, and cross-exchange high-frequency arbitrage.
Viktor also lays out UTEXO's broader thesis on stablecoin adoption and payments. He argues that the biggest growth opportunity for stablecoins isn't in DeFi yield — it's in emerging markets where USDT already functions as everyday money for savings, remittances, and increasingly, point-of-sale payments. UTEXO is positioning itself as the infrastructure layer for that shift, working alongside partners like WalletConnect and aligning closely with Tether's distribution strategy. The episode closes with Viktor's take on what blockchain is actually good for — payments, trading, and gambling — and why ten years in the trenches taught him to ignore everything else.
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