Meanwhile - Bitcoin Life Insurance
The Crypto Conversation
Zac Townsend is CEO and Co-Founder of Meanwhile, the first life insurance provider denominated and operating in Bitcoin. Life Insurance serves a critical role in developed economies, and Meanwhile is building a defining financial institution for the global Bitcoin economy. Why you should listen Meanwhile is the world’s first fully Bitcoin‑denominated life insurance company, licensed and regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority. Operating out of Hamilton, Bermuda, it offers Bitcoin Whole Life policies that allow users to pay premiums in BTC, accumulate savings denominated in Bitcoin, and...
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Ryze Labs - Web3, AI, Crypto and Beyond
The Crypto Conversation
Matthew Graham is the Managing Partner at Ryze Labs, a fund investing in blockchain innovators worldwide who are building Web3 applications to drive adoption and expand access to the next generation of the internet. Why you should listen In this conversation, Matthew Graham, managing partner at Ryze Labs, discusses the intersection of AI and crypto, the investment thesis of Ryze Labs, and the potential of Web3. He emphasizes the importance of stablecoins in the financial infrastructure, describing stablecoins as the “best product-market fit in crypto,” especially for emerging...
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Idea-L® - From Idea to Funded Startup
The Crypto Conversation
Peter Goodwin is the CEO and founder of Idea-L®, the platform that combines generative AI and real-time validation to help anyone go from idea to funded startup, without gatekeepers. Think: “AI x AngelList meets Product Hunt — but fully decentralized.” Why you should listen idea‑L® is an AI-powered, Web3-native platform designed to accelerate the journey from concept to launch. At its heart is a step-by-step process—Imagine, Design, Execute, Accelerate, and Live—providing founders with a structured framework to turn bold ideas into viable ventures without the usual guesswork....
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Kaia - Stablecoins for mini-Dapps on Superapps
The Crypto Conversation
John Cho is Vice President of Partnerships at Kaia DLT Foundation, a non-profit organization established to accelerate the Kaia blockchain’s global adoption and ecosystem maturity. Why you should listen Kaia is a mobile-first superapp that’s rapidly becoming one of the most intriguing Web3 platforms to watch. Originally known as Klaytn, Kaia rebranded and repositioned itself in 2024 with a bold vision: make crypto invisible. By integrating blockchain seamlessly into daily mobile life, Kaia’s goal is to onboard the next billion users without them even realizing they’ve crossed...
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tBTC - The Bitcoin Standard for DeFi
The Crypto Conversation
Callan, also known as “Sap” is the Co-Founder of Threshold Labs, the managing team behind Threshold Network’s tBTC, a trust-minimized bridge enabling native Bitcoin in DeFi. Why you should listen Threshold Network is a decentralized infrastructure protocol that leverages threshold cryptography to provide privacy and access control services on public blockchains. It was formed through the merger of two projects, Keep and NuCypher, with the aim of enabling secure and decentralized custody and data privacy. One of its core offerings is tBTC, a decentralized bridge that allows users to bring...
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Algorand Foundation - Why TVL is a Poor Metric For Investment Decisions
The Crypto Conversation
Staci Warden is the Algorand Foundation CEO, and Dr. Matthew Brigida is Chief Economist at Algorand Foundation. In June, the Algorand Foundation’s tokenomics team released a new study questioning the assumption that TVL is a meaningful investment signal. Despite being widely cited as a proxy for legitimacy, the research found that TVL doesn’t correlate with token performance, even when adjusted for known distortions like double-counting. Why you should listen The team analyzed 300+ cryptocurrencies from 2023–2024, simulating weekly long/short strategies based on TVL rankings. The result?...
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Coinpass - The UK Crypto Platform for Businesses
The Crypto Conversation
Jeff Hancock is the CEO of Coinpass, a UK-based crypto exchange acquired by OANDA in 2023. He’s bringing crypto and traditional finance closer together in a secure, regulated way. Why you should listen Born in London in 2018, Coinpass climbed the regulatory mountain early, securing an FCA crypto-asset registration and then catching the eye of multi-asset heavyweight OANDA, which snapped up a majority stake in August 2023. Now the exchange enjoys the deep pockets and risk-management chops of a global FX giant while keeping its Union-Jack credentials intact. Coinpass is...
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Pi Squared - The Verifiable Settlement Layer for AI and Crypto
The Crypto Conversation
Grigore Roșu is a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois and a former NASA engineer, where he developed the K Framework - an open-source “Rosetta Stone” for programming language semantics. A day-one contributor to the Ethereum Foundation, he later founded Runtime Verification, now the leading formal verification company in Web3. In 2023, he founded Pi Squared with the vision of bringing the next million developers to Web3 by utilizing his revolutionary K Framework. Why you should listen Pi Squared solves the fragmentation and trust limitations of today’s blockchain...
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Signals - Fixing NFT Launches
The Crypto Conversation
Nick Sainato, the Co-Founder of Gamma, has just launched Signals to fix NFT launches. Signals is a first-of-its-kind go-to-market platform that uncovers hidden demand signals and helps determine a fair market price for items within any launch, on any blockchain, on any drop site. Why you should listen NFT launches are famously chaotic: dummy wallets farm allow-lists, creators guess at a mint price, and traders pray the gas-war gods are kind. Signals flips that script. Built by the Gamma team, the Signals platform lets any collection on any chain list a drop in a neutral pre-launch lobby where...
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Gaia - Decentralized AI Inferencing
The Crypto Conversation
Shashank Sripada merges institutional rigor with systemic change. After managing $7B+ in assets and advising the White House, he co-founded Gaia to prove decentralized models can scale equitably. Gaia aims to empower anyone—from individual knowledge workers to domain experts—to build, launch, scale, and monetize their own AI agents. Why you should listen Gaia aims to empower anyone—from individual knowledge workers to domain experts—to build, launch, scale, and monetize their own AI agents. Each agent runs as a Gaia “node,” a lightweight, sandboxed runtime powered by technologies...
info_outlineHarsehaj Singh is the CEO and co-founder of Avantis, an on-chain exchange for trading and market-making cryptocurrencies, forex, and commodities.
Why you should listen
Built on Coinbase’s Layer 2 chain, Base, Avantis is designed to offer traders permissionless access to crypto, forex, metals, and real-world commodities—all directly from their wallet. It's backed by serious players like Pantera Capital, Founders Fund, and Galaxy Digital. Unlike typical decentralized exchanges that just handle crypto, Avantis allows you to trade a wide array of assets with leverage—up to 100x on forex and commodities, and 50x on crypto—making it an ambitious bridge between traditional finance and DeFi.
The trading experience itself is designed to be more user-friendly and risk-aware. Avantis has baked in features like loss rebates, which can return up to 20% of a trader's losses under specific conditions, and incentives for positive slippage that make getting in and out of trades potentially smoother and more profitable. For liquidity providers, the platform offers USDC vaults with junior and senior tranches, giving LPs control over their risk exposure and rewards. LPs can also time-lock their deposits to earn additional yield and XP rewards. It’s a system that balances the need for deep liquidity with the safety of the capital involved, which is crucial in high-leverage environments.
What makes Avantis stand out is its focus on engagement through gamified incentives. Their XP rewards program gives users points for trading, providing liquidity, and referring others. These XP points can lead to future perks, governance rights, and seasonal leaderboard rewards, making it feel more like participating in a game or social network than using a traditional exchange. Between the wide range of tradable markets, its advanced risk tooling, and this immersive rewards system, Avantis is building something that feels like the future of trading—accessible, global, and defi-native.
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