Earlier this summer I had a great conversation with @ShanAggarwal, Chief Business Officer at @coinbase. We cover a ton of ground, including what his role entails, how it's evolved through the years, Coinbase's M&A and product strategy, interesting deals he's worked on, and career advice he'd have for folks just starting out. Shan has a unique vantage point in the industry and it was fun to sit down with him. Hope you enjoy! - Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (1:37) Shan’s role and his journey from VC to Coinbase (5:11) Acquiring Tagomi, building Coinbase Prime, and raising in a bear market (12:03) The evolution of Coinbase’s culture (25:14) Prediction markets, Coinbase Ventures, and competing with partners (32:10) Tokenized equities and bootstrapping on-chain liquidity (36:32) USDC, Hyperliquid, and stablecoin network effects (40:28) How Coinbase integrates acquired companies (43:16) Repositioning Coinbase beyond a crypto exchange (50:39) Padel, protocol IR, and Shan’s crypto convictions (57:30) Leadership lessons and betting on high-agency people (1:07:12) Cobie, Echo, and Coinbase’s capital-formation strategy

New episode of @Archive_Pod with @EvgenyGaevoy, CEO of @wintermute_t. We discussed Wintermute's journey since 2017, how market-making has evolved, and how Evgeny's upbringing has shaped his philosophy. Wintermute is a unique company within crypto and Evgeny is a thoughtful guest, so I hope you'll enjoy this one. (0:00) Intro (1:07) What is Wintermute (4:14) Evgeny's upbringing (15:59) Joining Optiver and learning market making (26:28) Leaving Optiver, moving to London, and discovering crypto (36:00) Starting Wintermute and raising from VCs (41:17) Getting into DeFi before it was obvious (53:53) How Wintermute avoids bureaucracy and operated like a tech company (1:03:33) The Golden Path for crypto (1:23:01) What bad market making behaviour actually looks like (1:35:33) Evgeny's thoughts on Hyperliquid (1:39:09) Wintermute's next chapters, and building beyond market making (1:51:57) DND, Warhammer, and grand strategy games —-

It was a pleasure having on @ivo_crnkovic, the founder of @pascaldottrade. We dive into some interesting, underdiscussed prediction market topics, such as the shortcomings of existing prediction markets and what risk transfer in prediction markets looks like. We also dive into the philosophy behind Pascal, what building a user friendly product really means, and what the future holds. This one's a spicy one, so make sure to give it a listen. If you're interested in checking out @pascaldottrade, shoot @ivo_crnkovic a dm! (0:00) Intro (1:10) Intro and the state of prediction markets today (4:44) Prediction markets for real risk transfer (15:07) Capital efficiency for event contracts (18:46) The story behind Pascal (21:58) The different players trading on prediction markets (32:16) The lifecycle of new markets (38:23) Pascal's OTC desk (44:25) Learnings from dYdX (51:24) the dYdX mafia (54:16) Pascal's roadmap

Over the years @trailofbits has become a household name in cybersecurity. In this conversation with Trail of Bits' founder @dguido, we dive into the complete journey, from how they got started, to nearly going out of business during the government shutdown, to becoming a well respected pioneer in the industry. We also touch on a variety of other topics, from Lazarus Group's activities to the impact of AI on cyber from both an offensive and defensive perspective. Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:23) Altitude (1:14) What is Trail of Bits and how did it get started (6:49) Dan's upbringing and developing a passion for computer science and hacking (16:25) Working at the NSA (22:51) North Korean hacks on crypto (28:22) The incident response team at the Fed (33:05) The motivation behind Trail of Bits, and DARPA's role (47:23) Starting Trail of Bits (58:22) Government shutdown, losing all revenue, and surviving with 1 paycheck (1:04:36) Hiring people for mastery and building a high agency team (1:15:34) Bitcoin post-quantum cryptography (1:20:12) The culture and expectation at Trail of Bits (1:38:42) Mythos and AI's role in cybersecurity (2:05:48) San Bernardino iPhone incident, and Dan's proudest moments (2:12:12) Learning to become a CEO (2:19:59) Peiter "Mudge" Zatko

I really enjoyed my conversation with @buffalu__ about all things @jito_labs. We dive into the early history of Jito, what finding PMF was like, and what the future holds. (1:23) What is Jito (10:18) Why Solana stood out early (16:06) Starting Jito (22:58) FTX fallout and doubling down on Solana (30:54) MEV politics and shutting down the mempool (36:20) Memecoins (38:59) Finding PMF and scaling to >90% of validators (41:27) Jito airdrop and token launch strategy (51:40) Expanding beyond infra to user facing apps (59:12) The Solana ecosystem and what it needs (1:16:00) Jito’s presence in DC and crypto policy

I had a wonderful chat with Michael, the founder of @FireblocksHQ. We talked about the early history of Fireblocks, scaling through DeFi summer, Unit 8200, how to successfully build a B2B crypto product, and much more. Hope folks enjoy! (0:00) Intro (0:34) Altitude (1:31) Growing up in Israel, learning programming, and starting internet businesses (7:49) Unit 8200 and the mindset it teaches (16:05) First startup, mentorship, and early lessons (20:20) Where the inspiration for Fireblocks came from (28:18) Finding product-market fit with Fireblocks (37:11) Enterprise-first vs bottom-up GTM strategy (42:53) Catching the DeFi wave (51:24) Surviving Terra, 3AC, and FTX (1:08:44) How Fireblocks is evolving

Benchmark does not make many crypto investments, so when they did the Series A of @tryfomo, it's interesting to hear how it came together. "We were very appreciative of how much time they spent getting to know the product."

How should a startup think about user feedback? Users don't always know what they want, and they may have differing views. Se shares some insight into how to balance these issues: "often the solution is not the thing they propose...we needed everyone moment to be joyful."

I had an incredible chat with @seyong, co-founder of @tryfomo. fomo launched less than a year ago but has already had a remarkable rise, becoming a go-to trading app for both crypto-native and mainstream users alike. We cover a lot of ground, from the original motivation to build fomo, to recruiting the early team, what worked (and didn't work) with user acquisition, and what he's learned over the past year. Sometimes the success behind certain crypto products can feel random, but it's clear that fomo's is not. They've been extremely intentional with every part of the company (team/product/growth/fundraising), and it reflects in the feedback from users. Was a pleasure recording this one. (0:00) Intro (1:13) Early life. Jersey and Yale (7:03) Working on product at dYdX and meeting Paul (14:06) The genesis of fomo, early team formation (33:42) Product-first philosophy and obsession with UX (46:24) User-led growth and getting to know your customers (59:48) Raising Series A from Benchmark (1:06:22) Where fomo is heading; the speculation graph era (1:21:49) Building a social product to match its growth (1:28:58) Memecoins as a category (1:40:35) Other teams that Se admires

New episode of @Archive_Pod with @jmo_mx, co-founder of @gauntlet_xyz. Anyone who knows John knows he's extremely direct, and he holds nothing back here. We discuss the evolution of Gauntlet through the years, the future of vaults, what's happening with Aave, and more. Thank you to @altitude for making this show possible. (0:00) Intro (1:16) What Gauntlet does (5:28) Risk management vs asset management (11:09) What’s missing in vaults today? (16:52) Innovation and investing in DeFi (19:32) Can the blue chips get disrupted? (22:07) The Aave DAO politics (30:18) Regulatory environment - then and now (41:01) Exploits and hacks in DeFi (46:39) Gauntlet’s culture (48:44) John’s truck and his love for chocolate milk

For our second episode, I sat down with @ethanyish, founder of @AlliumLabs, which is the data platform serving the most important crypto companies today. Ethan is incredibly thoughtful, and Allium's journey is a a case study of how to build a B2B crypto company that customers love. We dive into Ethan's upbringing, what acquiring the initial customers looked like, and the nitty gritty of crypto data. Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:25) Altitude (1:15) Getting engaged in Argentina (4:43) What Allium is (9:44) Upbringing in Singapore (19:08) Working in AI before crypto (30:05) What starting Allium was like (39:53) Building through the bear market (43:05) Managing Allium’s internal infra (48:04) Scaling Allium, mistakes, and customer acquisition (52:28) Allium’s customer centric culture (55:31) AI strategy at Allium (1:09:31) Future of token distribution

I asked Keone why Monad didn't emphasize pre-launch TVL and farming campaigns like many other recent protocols. "Protocol TVL and transfer volumes are easy to game ... to grow an ecosystem and establish real world PMF takes time."

I asked Keone about the pros/cons of protocols taking a political stance. (e.g. Ethereum generally perceived as more left-leaning while Solana is perceived as more right-leaning/capitalistic). "I don't think at the L1 foundation level we should express a political opinion."