Jill and Meltem reunite amidst corona-madness to breakdown how they are thinking about this unprecedented situation. They take us back to the Black Plague and project into an increasingly sci-fi future. Tune in as they discuss the options on th

Episode 28: Breaking Banks with Bitcoin

Nov 28th, 2019 25m 23s

This episode of What Grinds my Gears was recorded live on stage at SF Blockchain Week 2019.In this episode, Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss banking Bitcoin, what a bank really is, and whether or not we're just building the same thing

Episode 27: Origin Myth: The Market and Marketing of Bitcoin

Oct 22nd, 2019 51m 5s

Every movement that has withstood the test of time — from religions to empires — has had a founding myth attached. This is the story of how it all started. Often these legends are shrouded in mystery. They are left open to interpretation. This

Episode 26: Death and Taxes

Aug 23rd, 2019 1h 10m

They say there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. And while we don’t get know of anyone who has managed to cheat death, we certainly know of people who have dodged their taxes. In this episode we unpack the myth that cryptocurrency c

Episode 25: Mesh Much? Telecommunications, Topology, and Tokens

Aug 16th, 2019 1h 17m

Most of us take our connectivity to the internet and other telecommunications networks for granted. But behind the simple and benign act of connecting to the internet lies an intricate maze of physical hardware, wires, and complex routing logic

Episode 24: Banning Bitcoin: The Long Arc of an Infinite Revolution

Aug 8th, 2019 1h 4m

Encryption has long walked the line between weapon and tool. While the so-called “Crypto Wars” ended in the 1990’s, in 2013, Edward Snowden showed us why the fight was long from over. This week, we discuss the brink of another type of Crypto Wa

Episode 23: Price Predictions: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Vol

Jul 9th, 2019 56m 20s

Bitcoin: is it a safe haven or a risk asset? This week we are (for once) talking price. We try to make sense of the recent run ups and retracements and we explore how the valuation of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fit into the larger econo

Episode 22: Welcome to FaceCoin

Jul 2nd, 2019 59m 2s

What do you get when you put together a consortium of private members issuing a currency that is aimed at world domination? First, the Federal Reserve. And then, 100 years later, Facebook’s Libra! In this episode, we untangle why Facebook needs

Episode 21: Bonus Round: Blockchain Week Recap

May 21st, 2019 51m 19s

Every May, the blockchain and crypto industry gets together for a week of announcements, hype, and lambo giveaways. In this live recording, Jill and Meltem provide a retrospective on years past and discuss how this year’s “Blockchain Week” diff

Episode 20: ETF, F No?

May 14th, 2019 45m 31s

You can’t talk about bitcoin for ten minutes without having someone bemoan the lack of a bitcoin ETF. In this live episode, we talk about the history of pooled investment vehicles, why they’ve grown exponentially over the last two decades, and

Episode 19: It’s All about DEX, Baby

May 7th, 2019 1h 18m

Markets are the beating heart of the financial system. As new asset classes emerge and markets get built, the questions are often the same: who should be able to participate in markets? How should trades get executed? And what are the tradeoffs

Episode 18: Tarred and Tethered

Apr 30th, 2019 1h 29m

Episode Description: What the heck is a tether and why is everyone always talking about it? This week, we untangle what’s going on with Tether, Bitfinex, and their affiliated banks, and why this topic keeps coming up. We also delve into collate

Episode 17: Fact or FUD: Crypto in the Media

Apr 23rd, 2019 1h 3m

Media about crypto has been at best confusing and at worst blatantly and deliberately wrong. It bounces back and forth between utopian, unrealistic hype which oversells the technology and grim, depressing tales of doom, destruction, terrorist f

Episode 16: Beating the Market: A Game of Geeks and Greeks

Apr 16th, 2019 1h 16m

How do you figure out if you’re any good at investing? How do you decide if you made the best choices possible in picking stocks, bonds, or crypto assets to buy? In the wild world of finänce, defining and measuring the performance of an investm

Episode 15: Fork Yourself

Apr 9th, 2019 1h 17m

Forks, or chain splits, are some of the most dramatic events in cryptocurrency. In this episode we untangle how we think about them. Are they like stock splits? Dividends? Or is it more like owning a cow that gives birth to a surprise and poten

Episode 14: This is Water: A Story about Liquidity

Apr 2nd, 2019 1h 6m

This week, we dive into liquidity, a word whose blatant abuse really grinds our gears! We break down what liquidity *actually* means in markets, for companies, and for individual assets, and the role of market participants and market structure

Episode 13: You’ve Been Liquidated

Mar 26th, 2019 50m 59s

This week we are talking about prediction markets. Tune in to hear about the history of prediction markets, their applications across governance and finance, and how they are getting implemented as decentralized marketplaces. From gambling to s

Episode 12: The ICO Ice Age: Back to Banking

Mar 19th, 2019 57m

This week, we delve into crypto seasons and how winter isn’t actually winter at all but the dawn of a new age. New species are emerging, and old species are on the verge of going extinct (well, bankrupt). We also do some soul searching and ask

Episode 11: Alex, I’ll Take “Blockchain” for $500

Mar 12th, 2019 1h 4m

Innovation theater: a performance enacted by a big corporate incumbent to demonstrate it is still fresh, innovative, and on the cutting edge, often without any real value add to the firm. This week we are exploring enterprises and their experim

Episode 10: Surveillance Capitalism

Mar 5th, 2019 1h 8m

This week, we're diving deep into the rise of surveillance capitalism, it’s slow and steady creep into the heart of the crypto community, and what that might mean for our cypherpunk dreams of privacy.You can find our extended show notes on Med

Episode 9: Initial Country Offering

Feb 26th, 2019 54m 23s

If you turned on CNBC at any point during 2018, you’ll know that lots of startups and entrepreneurs used initial coin offerings (ICOs) to raise funding. Well, it turns out that countries also got into the game. In this episode, we explore the u

Episode 8: Living on Borrowed DAI

Feb 19th, 2019 1h 4m

One of the key innovations of bitcoin is that it solves something called the double spend problem. This means that every bitcoin is provably scarce — it can’t exist in two peoples’ wallets at the same time. This is a big deal because it’s actua

Episode 7: Money Makes the World Go Round

Feb 12th, 2019 59m 33s

In past episodes, hosts Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson have touched on crypto business models, crypto asset classifications, and governance as both a function and a business. These topics are ultimately shaped by how a project chooses to rais

Episode 6: Crypto Cartels

Feb 5th, 2019 59m 51s

In this episode, hosts Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson cover the nebulous and thorny topic of crypto governance mechanisms and the merging of politics and finance in the form of on-chain governance via token voting and staking. We draw from th

Episode 5: Venezuela: Living in a Powder Keg

Jan 29th, 2019 1h 4m

One of crypto’s favorite narratives has always been that it can help people in places where their local currency is being debased. Venezuela, with its 1,000,000% inflation rate and political instability, has been a prime topic of conversation.