Blockchain Insider Ep. 27. XRP's Ripple effect and Blockchain use cases
FILE DETAILS
Audio Length: 		00:57:16	
Audio Quality: 		Good	
Number of Interviewers:		1
Number of Interviewees:		1

Start of Audio
ST:	We are here. At 11FS headquarters in London WeWork, for Episode 27 of Blockchain Insider, and the very first one of 2018. So, Happy New Year, listeners. Today, we bring you a look back at all the stories we missed over the Christmas break, our predictions for 2018, and we catch up with CoinDesk’s Peter Rizzo. Okay. Back for the news is the wonderful Colin G Platt. Did you have a good break, sir?
CP:	I had an excellent break. Way too much food, way too much French wine, not enough sleep. Good times. Happy New Year. 
ST:	That sounds like a great New Year was had by all. And you’re now in a field in France?
CP:	I-, I am next to a field in France. Simon and I had a discussion, earlier today, in which I showed him this field in France, that I’m right next to.
ST:	He is right next to a field. It’s unbelievable. Before we get in to the news, we’ve got to let you know that today’s episode of Blockchain Insider is brought to you by Corda. Corda is an opensource blockchain platform that allows businesses to transact directly, and in strict privacy, using smart contracts. Corda enables complex transactions, using real assets, and legally binding agreements, without the need of a trusted intermediary. Corda is the result of a collaborative effort, let by R3, with over 160 of the world’s largest banks and technology partners. It’s ready to build on today. The financial community is deploying Corda to manage their agreements and move assets globally. Now you can transform your business ecosystem with the platform selected by the world’s largest institutions to build their future on, Corda. Go to Corda.net to learn more. Alright, let’s drop in to the news, Colin. Kicking off with some predictions, it seems like a number of predictions have been made, everybody’s doing their predictions posts. The one here is on Coin Telegraph, there, the title is, 2018 Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Outlook: Expert Blog. Did you see anything in here that you liked?
CP:	So, I saw some interesting things in here, some things that I liked, some things that I didn’t agree with, but maybe that’s my lack of expertise here. So, Ken Alabi, who is a doctor in research in computer sciences, and all kinds of great stuff like that, brought up some interesting things, his main themes are scaling, particularly within these decentralised blockchains. He hasn’t talked about it as much in the permissioned blockchains, but he’s starting to see some of these things start to mature, and come live, which I absolutely agree with, I think that’s going to happen in 2018. We’re going to hear about that from a few interviews we have coming up in the next couple of weeks, as well as today. Liquidity, volatility in cryptocurrencies, this is not a new theme. So, the fact that Bitcoin can move up and down 15%, 20% in a day, maybe still 30%, 40% in a day, in some of the other cryptocurrencies, will continue, in his opinion. I absolutely agree with this, so, once again, a reminder, if you’re thinking about putting money in to cryptocurrencies, don’t put money you wouldn’t take to Las Vegas in them, whether you’re going long or short. He also sees a major bubble burst, or major correction. I-, I actually don’t see this happening, I think we might have had ours, it’s going to continue to go up and down and be volatile. Simon, I know you-, this, kind of, goes with the thoughts that you had, which we’ll talk about in just a second. Personally, I think we’re going to keep going up, I wouldn’t put all of your money for your house in it, but I don’t know that we’re necessarily at the point where everything falls apart quite yet.
ST:	Interesting thoughts. Scaling without question is the one that has been, for the permissionless blockchain world, the debate. He points to Lighting and Raiden, but not ultimately solving the problem, and directed acyclic graphs, like those from Hashgraph, or IOTA or Byteball, being-, being of interest, as well as techniques around sharding really starting to take off. So, it basically says that, this ain’t your mamma’s blockchain anymore, this stuff’s evolving, and maybe that’s a part of what-, what solves-, what solves for it. And then we’ve talked about liquidity an awful lot. I did, on 11FS.com, as you mentioned, kind of, my 2018 predictions, and I tried to take a balanced approach, where I looked at some of the risks, as well as some of the opportunities, and I called out the main risks as being, first and foremost, regulatory risk. I think the South Korean moves to limit the amount of investment coming in to the market, and several other regulators probably following that, just because I do think we’re going to have that story, where somebody loses their life because they put all their money in this stuff and it went horrible. It just-, it really does make my stomach churn, that it feels like that could happen. Secondly, I think panic can take hold in a speculative market, really easily, and these markets don’t have circuit breakers. If we do start to see downward pressure, it could really, really run, and that would create the-, the third risk, which is a run on the exchanges. How much of the liquidity is real is something we’ve talked about a lot before. And then, lastly, the big risk is, are we creating real value here? And Vitalik nailed it, with his tweet from the 13th of December, so, the total cryptocoin market just hit 0.5 trillion dollars, but have we earned it? And that whole tweetstorm is really interesting. So, where’s the economic value? I don’t think that’s been derided yet, but I do think the potential is-, is absolutely there. On the flipside, I do think that we’ll see the beginning of Web 3.0 projects gaining traction. Web 3.0 is the term often used as, kind of, decentralised infrastructure, where Web 2.0 was everything to do with social networks, the internet of commerce, where it was Amazon Web Services and Cloud. Web 3.0 is the potential for decentralised services and new governance models creating new business models. Prediction two was that institutions are missing much of the knowledge and infrastructure to safely invest in crypto assets. So, if I’m a pension fund, I probably don’t know anything about this space, still, but I’m getting people asking me about it. If I’m a-, a large independent financial advisor, I’m probably being asked about this, but I don’t necessarily know where to go. And whilst there is the development of stuff like OTC desks and custodians, I think that’s got a long way to go. Prediction three, I think ICOs will get smaller and more legitimate. I think there’s a definite, as you were saying, before we came on the air, Colin, the ICOs that are happening on cryptocompare.com, you can see a falloff from October, almost directly, and-, and the practice of, you know, VCs pushing companies unlikely to deliver towards a token sale for a liquidity event? I think that’s just cowardice, and absolutely has to stop. But I do think we’ll actually see some best practice start to evolve, and I’m definitely keen to work with anybody who’s doing anything along those lines. My fourth one was one that I think is maybe-, may or may not happen. I think this one’s a bit of a risk. I think the first pump and dump ring might be arrested as organised crime, but I do think regulators and/or law enforcement have a long way to go, in terms of being that sophisticated, to catch it. I wonder what role the exchanges, and others, should be playing, and I wonder if a regulator knows a pump and dump ring when they see it, and the impact that can really have on-, on unsuspecting, kind of, consumers, who are putting their money in this space, especially with some of the activity you see on centralised exchanges. And last, but not least, because I’ve said a lot of words, 2018, for me, is the year crypto has to grow up. It’s-, it’s been nice, it’s been fun, but we’ve got to deliver some value right now. So, Colin, I don’t know how you reflect on those-, on those thoughts.
CP:	I agree with a lot of what you said there. I think I-, I would like to see the-, the pump and dump, specifically touching on that point, I’d like to see that disappear, because I don’t think that’s helpful, and I think that hurts a lot of people who are just getting in to this, and naively invest in something that’s going up, because it’s going up, when there’s a lot of people, kind of, coordinating that price. I’m-, I’m more sceptical that people will-, that regulators will come down on that, in the near future. I think 2018, unless something so outrageous comes out, or maybe some of these large ICOs, particularly singling out Tezos here, because of the news, not because of necessarily any bad, or anything worse, in what they’ve done, but we have talked about this on the show a lot. I think that they’re-, they’re the more imminent targets, because they are so out there, whereas, somebody running a Telegram group with 100 follows that goes out and pumps? That should stop, that is illegal, that needs to stop, but, I don’t know that it’s going to come quite that quickly, I’d give it another year or two. The one I did want to touch on there is-, is ICOs and legitimacy. I really liked your point about getting rid of the things that VCs have been doing that aren’t necessarily beneficial to the wider investment community. I don’t necessarily see ICOs becoming smaller and more legitimate. Smaller, perhaps. More legitimate? I’m not sure. Now, there are certainly some out there that are doing very good, very legitimate things, but I think a lot of that will kind of move back in to more traditional venture, Seed A, B, C type investing. But we’ll see.
ST:	We shall see, big year in front of us, but, although we’ve been out for the Christmas break, cryptocurrency never sleeps. It never sleeps, not even once. So, how could we not start the main news stories without looking at some prices? So, Fortune.com are talking about how high can Bitcoin’s price go in 2018? So, we’re recording this on the 3rd of January, what are we looking at right now, Colin? Around $15,000?
CP:	Happy Genesis day, by the way.
ST:	Yes, indeed, indeed.
CP:	Happy 9th birthday to Bitcoin [laughter]. So, Bitcoin here is currently trending at, just over $15,000 on Bitfinex, as I’m looking at it, USD. So, how high can it go? I mean, a lot of people put this in, you said that we might have a major correction inside of these. Personally, I think that this thing can go up to $100,000, because I don’t see why not. There’s a massive amount of risk in that. Other people are talking about numbers that are much higher or much lower, $50,000 has been bandied about quite a bit. I don’t-, I don’t know, really, what the fundamentals are, it’s really just a, how interested are people going to be at, how much are people chasing this price, and how much legitimate and mainstream investment is coming in to this, as well as how much pure leverage is coming in to this? This is people borrowing money to put it in. So, it could be everything from, it drops back down to a few thousand, to, it doubles or t ripples from here. Nobody really knows, is the short answer.
ST:	So, you-, you talked before, and I don’t think we’ve really explored it on the podcast, about Bitcoin being a liquidity gobbling monster. Expand on that thesis a little bit for me. Because I think it’s-, it’s an interesting set of ideas, that-, that kind of goes against-, because, I mean, Bitcoin, periodically, seems to go through this rally, rally, rally, 30% correction, and between $19,000 and $13,000, I think we dropped more than the 30%, but actually, now, at around $15,000, we seem to be starting to-, to stabilise again, and that just could be that it’s the end of the-, the end of the tax year has gone, and we’re off to the races again, but-, and profit taking’s been done, but how much of this liquidity gobbling-, you know, what does that actually mean?
CP:	What does that mean? Okay, so, let’s explore that, quickly. What do we mean by liquidity? So, when I talk about liquidity, I mean specifically the-, the money that circulates in the economy, or is easy to get to. So, in Bitcoin, very clear demonstration here, this is Bitcoin changing for dollars, or euros, or yen, or whatever you have, inside of an exchange. You can think about it as a free float. So, people go in, they sign up for Coinbase, or Kraken, or some other place, for the first time. They go in with their credit card, or with a bank transfer, and put $100 in, they buy Bitcoin, whatever the going price is, and then they sit and forget it. So, that $100 is effectively dead money. It’s sitting in there, somebody sells them a Bitcoin, and that money doesn’t move anymore. Now, there’s people that say, “Well, I want to invest in this, longer term,” so they might do something similar, on a larger scale, and they actually put that Bitcoin in the HODL, H-O-D-L, or, basically, they withdraw it. So, the amount of Bitcoin that’s actually circulating is actually reduced. Whereas the dollar amount, it stays fairly fixed, it’s sitting on the exchanges. Some people are pulling this out, but it is quite difficult, I know Simon and I were having discussions, that we, personally, experienced some of the-, the difficulties around these, in moving in and out. I don’t see that happening, and being fixed, in the near term, or, really any reason why people would be selling Bitcoin en masse, unless we have a-, a huge drop, and some people want to pull out, but all of this, kind of, goes to push, and say, it’s very easy to buy Bitcoin the first time. Then that money just, kind of, gets pushed off to the side, and because we have a fixed number of Bitcoin, that will be 21 million, and we won’t get in to it today, but, minus about 12 and a half, at some point in the future, every Bitcoin, or single Bitcoin, or fraction of a Bitcoin that gets pulled, and doesn’t come back on to the exchange to react to market movements just makes that, the amount of Bitcoin moving around in a liquid, available amount, so much smaller, that, ultimately, this is going to drive volatility, this is going to drive the direction over the price of Bitcoin.
ST:	And there is a thesis that I find quite interesting, so Colin, thank you for that. So, yeah, indeed, I want to echo that happy 9th birthday to Bitcoin. There’s a couple of other coins out there that have done reasonably well. I mean, if-, it’s just been a crazy few days in the marketplace. Ethereum hit its record high, so, CoinDesk talk about it hitting over $900 at an all-time price high, and the XRP billionaires are covered in Forbes, so, Laura Shin, shout out to Laura, did a reasonably lengthy piece on the supposed net worth of both Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, the executives at Ripple. Any reflections on these two, Colin?
CP:	Yeah, let’s talk about Ethereum first. So, Ethereum is one that, last year, did incredibly well. I think it went up something like 40 or 50 times from this time last year, to just a few days ago, so that’s an incredible run. The fact that it’s continued to go up, over the last couple of weeks, doesn’t really overly surprise me. It’s up slightly against Bitcoin, but not a tonne, so if we use that as a benchmark. Ripple’s the one that I think has been a standout. I think it’s been up something like 360x last year. So, when I talked a minute ago about, Bitcoin has smaller amounts of Bitcoin relative to the total amount of Bitcoin that are moving around. Ripple is even more exaggerated by that. There’s a lot of people that, reportedly, had been investing in Ripple, back when it was worth sub 1 cent, saying, you know, “This is going to be the next Bitcoin, all the banks are using it, huge growth,” and have been buying that up. The total market cap, or network value, is probably more-, more true, is now back in second place, ahead of Ethereum, so, currently about $110 billion plus. So, just under half of Bitcoin. I don’t know why it’s necessarily at that, I’ve said, on multiple occasions, I don’t really get XRP and Ripple. I would not put any money in this, because I don’t get it, not to say it’s good or bad investment if you have put money in. I have no idea why it’s up, but it is up a lot, and some people have a tonne of this stuff.
ST:	Mm. Yeah, it’s the supposed bank coin, isn’t it? It’s like, the view is, the banks will end up using this thing, therefore there’s-, there’s a whole bunch of people saying, “Oh, it’s the banksters,” and the Reddit conversations around this stuff always give me some-, some tickle and some amusement. There’s definitely the Ripple argument, which goes, “This is preventing spam on the network,” so, you burn some XRP as a way of paying for your transaction fees, and they’ve pegged the transaction fees to fiat currency, so you would always pay a low fee for-, for using the Ripple network, and they publicly talk about having 100 plus, 150 banks on their network, although I do believe there’s definitely some marketing and some PR going on within that. So, you can see why somebody who’s in this space thinks, “Well, what’s going to get adopted? What coin should I be involved in?” I can sort of understand the surface level of it. It does amuse me, that we see people getting really angry about it, but still investing in it, and, always, with these things, it seems to be driven around news stories. A bit of news comes out, and the price seems to move massively, and the volatility is unbelievable, on these things. But, I think I agree with your broader point, Colin. I don’t get the connection between building an enterprise network for payments, and this cryptocurrency that is operating more like gas than Ether. It’s just a way of preventing spam in the network. It’s-, it’s an odd one, to me, but, certainly, it’s something that a lot of people see a lot of value in, and, of course, on the very first episode of Blockchain Insider, we spoke to Stefan Thomas, or I think it was the first episode, and so, do check out Episode 1, to-, to hear from him directly. So, ten years in, apparently, Colin, according to [laughter] according to Hacker Noon, nobody has come up with a use case for blockchain. So, is that true?
CP:	Well, first of all, as we just said a moment ago, happy nine years to Bitcoin [laughter] so, we’re nine years in to blockchain, so-, if we’re counting by-, by the Bitcoin, maybe this guy’s been thinking of something else. This is an article by Kai Stinchcombe,  I hope I’m getting that right, who was looking at a lot of what was promised, and Tim Swanson’s written some interesting articles about this,  we, of course, talked to Tim on our interview episode over the holidays, so, go back and listen to that, as well, if you haven’t yet, but he said, essentially, Bitcoin, as it was first marketed, was really around payments, and a way to take on the banks and Western Unions of the world, and it proved that it’s not very good at that, which, I think, Simon, and you and I have had discussions about this. He talked about some things about transactions without governments being involved, and how the price goes up, and worries about people getting involved in these things that are potentially more financially vulnerable, and the price going up and down, which is a theme we have. So, I agree, a lot of the things that he says in here, and criticisms specifically about Bitcoin, blockchain, some of these other things that people come up with, like micropayments and IoT, not yet coming about. But I saw a really interesting tweet, rebuttal, from  Taylor Pearson, a couple of weeks ago, after this article came out, and I agree with a lot of what he said, as well, which is, you know, this is probably the most well-reasoned why blockchains don’t make sense, but the really underlying thing that Taylor brings up is, he’s kind of come and looked at this from the point of view of, when people first talked about the internet, it was, you had the, you know, the crypto anarchists who said, you know, “This is going to change everything, it’s going to (? 19.13) the governments, because we can talk to each other,” and then you had people who, you know, came out and said, “This is going to do nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing’s going to change. This is much like reading the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times on the internet. It doesn’t make it better than physical paper.” But really, what the-, the point is, is, now how people prefer paper reading on the internet. It’s how people change how newspapers are run. They’re run completely different now, because of the internet, than they were run before the internet. And the point that should be looked at with this article is, how are cryptocurrencies going to change financial services? Not, how are cryptocurrencies going to destroy financial services, or, how are financial services going to use blockchain, but it’s-, it’s that finer grain point that’s, kind of, in between complete collapse or complete adoption, that is, when people have a lot of money stored in Bitcoin, or in other cryptocurrencies, which we’re seeing today, what changes? What are the new businesses that happen? What-, when this stuff becomes easier to use, more freely available, what happens around the world? And so, Taylor pointed out things like, you know, going back to this New York Times and Wall Street Journal, that isn’t what changed. It’s Facebook, it’s Twitter, it’s Snapchat, it’s everything else that came about. It’s talking about how Amazon came about, not how Walmart fell apart. What are these new big things that happen, and affect these other businesses? What is truly, in the more central term, what is the disruption that happens because of a cryptocurrency or a permissioned blockchain, in a lot of cases?
ST:	So, I’ve been saying for some time, when somebody pays for a speaking gig from me, but here’s-, here’s one for free, that, Citibank didn’t miss the internet, Barclays didn’t miss the internet, they-, they have apps, they have internet, they have websites, but they didn’t benefit quite the same as Facebook or Google. What are the new business models is the really interesting question, and one of the things with any new technology is, what is the new business model? iTunes was an interesting business model. Spotify is an interesting business model. The ad revenue model is really what goes right back to 1993, with a little website called GNN.com, that was the first to really use ads to support its network. So, will we see that, and will we see something similar? I look for things that are-, that are promising, though, and I-, I do see that, if you were to use the metaphor, and I know some people are sick of using the metaphor of the internet, but, if you were to use that metaphor, we had VPNs, we had people doing stuff, pre-internet, for internal networks, that was of value, and I see the DLT stuff we’re doing as very, very similar. I mean, in the late 80s, Apple computers, and some of the IBM machines that were coming out in to corporations, were digitising for the first time, and putting computers on to people’s desks, and, you know, by the early 90s, before the internet had really taken off, that was completely normal for many people around the world, and I see the DLT projects as largely that. Whereas the-, some of the stuff that’s happening in the permissionless space, over a 10-year time horizon, 20-year time horizon, has the potential to be really strong. What’s different this time, what’s really compelling, is, now there are these coins. Now, there are these ways to invest in it that are so wildly speculative, that involve so many of the crowd, that have so much risk involved, but so much opportunity involved, it really is the wild west, and that’s why it’s compelling to me.
CP:	And can I just jump in on top of that? I mean, absolutely, it’s really interesting. I’ve made this, kind of, flippantly before, the thing behind Bitcoin, or backing Bitcoin, isn’t, you know, all this cryptocurrency, and cryptography, and all that fun stuff. It is-, it’s a religion, and I don’t say that in a pejorative way. What I mean here is, people believe in it, and they go out, and they evangelise why Bitcoin’s going to change the world, and if enough people hear that, and they start to believe it, as well, it’s going to self-fulfil itself, and we don’t have that push behind public databases. So, a lot of people look at permissioned blockchains and DLTs, and they say, “Well, you could do this in a public oracle database.” Yeah, you probably could, but who’s the one out driving that change? Whereas, you have a lot of Bitcoiners, you have a lot of Ethereum proponents going out, beating down banks’ doors, talking to CEOs, and getting in to talk to central banks, and getting them to go, “Hey, this thing’s going to change your world.” And you know what? They listen. That’s the difference.
ST:	I think they listen for a reason, though, Colin. It’s not just that, “Hey, it’s new.” I think there is something to the fact that there is-, there is something in this governance argument. The fact that I used to have to have one governance body and entity, and the fact that I can create a business model around governance, I mean, Bitcoin’s experiment was, can I have a trustless model, in which people are economically incentivised to maintain a ledger? And it has worked, and it-, it’s proven to be correct. Now, can I do other things with governance? Yeah, the Tezos experiment was interesting, because of how well they thought about governance, in one sense, in terms of making code updates, but maybe not so much on the foundation. Alright. So, next story, so, Colin, are cryptocurrencies threatening the world economy? There’s a story, I think it was on CoinDesk, where the ECB calls Bitcoin “a major threat to financial stability”, and there’s a story coming from Bloomberg, where Goldman Sees Crypto, Credit Shadowing Robust 2018 US Economy.
CP:	Well, I’m super happy, because I made a prediction on one of our blogs that came out about two weeks ago, that one of our major themes here is going to be economic instability, talked about by the Fed, or the ECB. We’re 2nd of January, and I’ve already got one right, so I’m very happy. But, more seriously, and to the point, a lot of money has started to pour in to cryptocurrencies, and people are taking notice. Central banks and bank analysts are starting to see what could happen, if we do have a major correction, like we’ve talked about, or what happens if, like I’ve been saying, this stuff keeps going up, and people start mortgaging-, remortgaging their house to put money in to Bitcoin, and then it collapses? Or, it goes the other direction. I mean, it could continue to go up for a long time, so, people could make a lot of money, and this could change a lot of dynamics, but I think it is a really interesting point, that both in Europe and the United States, people are starting to worry about what happens with Bitcoin and what happens to the economy. Could this change the way that the credit cycles work, for the better or for the worse? Could this change the way that the financial system works? And the ECB has singled out particular exchanges getting involved with Bitcoin futures, which were a big theme in the last month.
ST:	So, I’m a fan of the term “optics”, which is how things play out when you see them, to positions of power, or positions of influence. And, optically, when you look at CBOE and the CME, offering Bitcoin futures, somebody in a regulated position, somebody at a central bank goes, “Ah. This is starting to become something I should pay attention to.” So, as you said, slap in the face, this is the-, this is the mainstream moment, then we’re seeing the ripple effect from that, if you’ll excuse my-, my naming of a company we talked about. Okay, so, speaking of financial stability, there’s been a really interesting cryptocurrency pop up, that a lot of people have been excited about, called NEO. If you’ve been curious about NEO, the so-called “Ethereum of China”, they’re holding their first ever developer conference, at San Francisco, at the Intercontinental Hotel on the 30th and the 31st of January. So, the first 50 listeners of Blockchain Insider can get an exclusive 15% discount on tickets by entering the code INSIDE. That’s I-N-S-I-D-E, INSIDE, and you’d go to devcon.neo.org, so, devcon.neo.org, to find out more about the event, and to register today. Alright, Colin, a couple of stories from around the world, bumper week of news, as ever. New US tax codes are hitting crypto investors, this one was on Bitcoinist.com.
CP:	If-, if there weren’t enough things to complain about, then you-, new US tax codes, here’s a new one for anybody involved in Bitcoin. So, formerly, Bitcoin investors, Bitcoin traders, had to pay taxes whenever they bought a Bitcoin and sold it later, it was taxed in the US as property. I think we talked about this in the show, about six months ago. So, it’s the same thing as if you buy a house. So, obviously, if you’re not a US taxpayer, it’s very different, depending on which country you’re in. If you’re doing it, talk to somebody who’s a professional, we are definitely not, and we’re still not in the US. The loophole they closed, essentially, what traders could do is, if they could buy a Bitcoin, and trade that Bitcoin for Ethereum, they could do what was called a like for like. So, this is, essentially, if you bought a house, and then you traded somebody else a house, you didn’t have to pay the gains on that, you could use the same thing, or at least, some accountants let you use the same things, in your US taxes. They’ve essentially closed that, now, so they’ve said, “Well, if you trade from Bitcoin to Ethereum, or Ethereum to LiteCoin, you have to pay taxes on those gains.” This would shut down a lot of options that traders might be taking right now, which could affect the market in some way, shape or form, but it does not here, in Bitcoinist.com, that Bitcoin traders are notoriously bad about paying their taxes in the first place. So, we’ll see.
ST:	We shall see, indeed. Tis the season for taxes, for those around the world with capital gains, so, we’ll see what happens. And the last story this week, Colin, is what you really need to know about an app called Revolut and their crypto rates. So, Revolut being a fintech app, that we discuss quite often on Fintech Insider, our sister podcast. They launched an ability to-, I mean, they are, ostensibly, like, a-, a foreign exchange app. You go in to the app, and they give you really good rates for exchanging to whatever currency you want. They have something like 100 currencies, and it’s super easy to use, and they have about a million customers, and growing rapidly, across Europe and the world. They introduced, recently, a feature to allow anybody to buy cryptocurrencies, but this article is really talking about the rates. So, what’s happening with this one, Colin?
CP:	Yeah, so, as you said, people that use Revolut to change between, let’s say, pounds sterling and dollars, or euros, and yen, find that it’s really good, because you can use Revolut to send money between those currencies, and you go pull money out at an ATM, without having to pay extra fees, which is quite cool. They set up something for Bitcoin, and what they talk about is, A) that this is a very volatile currency, which, if you’ve listened to this show for more than two minutes, you know that we said the same, but they also add a fairly hefty fee of 1.5% to transact in Bitcoin. As far as I’m aware, you can’t actually take Bitcoin out of the Revolut app, so, I’m-, I’m personally not sure what the point of this thing is, other than pure speculation, and there perhaps are cheaper ways to do it. If you are looking at using this, do understand how they do it, it’s based on some averaging across different exchanges, using what’s called a volume weighted average price, and then they add their fees on top of that. If you’re selling, you use a similar thing, with another fee on top of that. Not necessarily the most straightforward thing, unless you know exactly what you’re doing, so, if you are thinking about using Revolut, read this-, this article in the show notes, understand exactly what’s going on, and what you’re getting yourself in to.
ST:	Yeah, so, it comes from Revolut.com, but we had a big discussion on FintechInsiderNews.com, which is our platform for fintech news, which you listeners can submit blockchain stories to, of course, on FintechInsiderNews.com, and we’ve had a lot of comments of people, sort of, saying, “We think this product’s crap,” “We think this product’s really good.” In terms of ease of use, you know, the 11FS team, we-, we benchmark for-, for financial companies, user experience, and we gave this one a full five out of five. Like, it’s-, it’s just so easy to make those transactions, once you’ve got the capability in your app. But, at the same time, if you were really looking to compare that to some of the other products and markets in terms of value, maybe it’s not so strong.
CP:	Yeah, and I think there’s no doubt that, as far as UI, this is-, I mean, it’s like moving any other money, and Revolut does a pretty good product, if you’re trying to move traditional currencies. So, if you’re looking for ease of use, great. The world knows my views, that ease of getting in and out of Bitcoin is perhaps less important than volatility.
ST:	Indeed. So, that does us for the news this week, so many stories we didn’t have time to cover. A story in Reuters, talking about the Israeli Central Bank looking to offer a digital currency, for faster payments, which is an interesting way. When they say “digital currency” it’s not really clear what type of currency that is. Apparently, Putin, Vladimir Putin, of Russia, is looking at the possibility of a “CryptoRuble”, and this one comes from CoinDesk, as a way to avoid western sanctions. So, they’ve seen that you can get around currency controls, and they-, they would like some of that. And then there’s a story in CoinDesk, as well, about John Mann MP, talking about why “Bitcoin’s blockchain technology”, I don’t get why it’s Bitcoin’s, but-, could have a huge impact on how the NHS works, which, you know, if you want to get in to politics-,
CP:	I have lots of thoughts on that.
ST:	Yeah, if you want to get in to the politics of the UK, then National Health Service is kind of a-, a beginning step for you. It’s just, kind of, the lightning rod for all politics. I do buy the idea that there’s something to be said for different governance, and proving to somebody that their data has been looked after in a private way, if you look at Filecoin as an interesting example, but I don’t know if I’ve necessarily got confidence in the digital service that the NHS has done, under their National Programme for IT over the past decade, to be able to work with that effectively. But anyway. Final story is a burger company’s shares rose after announcing its plans to start a blockchain customer loyalty programme, so, this is Bloomberg, The Hooters Franchisee Surges 41% on Cryptocurrency Rewards Program, in Bloomberg. Do we know anything about this one, Colin?
CP:	All I know is they put this thing out and they said this is similar to, kind of, the Burger King Russia thing, that came out a few months ago. All I can say is, Blockchain Insider is also announcing its cryptocurrency rewards programme, so definitely sign up for that, and we’re going to surge 40% or 50% on that.
ST:	Yeah, so, this was Chanticleer, a Charlotte-based Hooters franchisee, and owner of burger joints across the US. It’s just this-, I think Izzy Kaminska in FT Alphaville talks about this, this crazy idea of putting blockchain in your company name, and just seeing your shares-, share price surge, I think there’s something really weird going on in markets, around the appetite to get anything that looks like blockchain, at the moment. Somebody’s sitting at a Bloomberg terminal, getting far too excited.
CP:	Well, good thing we already have “Blockchain” in our name.
ST:	Well, indeed. If only we were offering tokens and shares, which we are not! Alright. Don’t forget, listeners, you can let us know what you think about any of the stories we’ve covered, by getting in touch with us on Twitter @BChainInsider, that’s the letter B, followed by Chain Insider, to share your thoughts, or you can get in touch with G-Sass himself, @ColinGPlatt, or myself, @SYTaylor, if you want to pick up with anything with us personally. You can also head over to FintechInsiderNews.com, to learn about the stories we covered, and comment, and if we like the comments, we-, we do read some of them out on the show, and they make the show notes. Or, also, you can drop us an email, at Podcasts@11FS.com. We would love to hear from you. 11FS, the company that brings you this podcast, are a challenger consultancy who help banks, asset managers, or anybody with a challenge in blockchain or DLT, to achieve more. If you want to understand how to commercialise your blockchain projects, get access to the crypto markets, and when this stuff’s going to be real, or just have a speaker for your next event, we hope you’ll reach out at Hello@11FS.com. Alright, next up, we spoke to Pete Rizzo, who is the Editor at CoinDesk.
[Break]
ST:	Okay, joining us today for our interview segment, we have Mr Pete Rizzo from CoinDesk. Pete, how are you, sir?
PR:	Good, thanks for having me.
ST:	Thanks for being with us. And, of course, we have Colin G Platt, Colin.
CP:	Hello, hello.
ST:	So, Pete, for those that are living under a rock, who are you? What do you do?
PR:	Yeah, so, Pete Rizzo, Editor for CoinDesk, we’re the leader in blockchain news, the largest industry news source focusing specifically on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Also, the host of the annual Consensus Conference, which is the industry’s largest event, every year in New York, and yeah, definitely, you know, CoinDesk.com, publishing news daily, that we hope is informing the growing crowd of blockchain and crypto enthusiasts.
ST:	Thank you for being with us. So, we have you on, kind of, to talk about the look back at 2017. You published the “Most Influential” list in 2017, and it definitely generated some buzz on social media. So, do you want to talk me through the, kind of, the editorial process that happened here, and-, and some of the characters, and how you chose them?
PR:	Yeah, sure. So, every year, CoinDesk publishes its Most Influential in Blockchain list, this is, I believe, the third year that we’ve done this. You know, as the industry news source, the industry (? 36.33) record, we’re always trying to help people process the year, and, you know, come to, I guess, an agreement or consensus on, you know, what happened. I think there’s a lot of information flow, there’s a lot of, you know, information diversity, and new things that happen every year, and we see our Most Influential list as both a way to highlight the people that played a role in that story, as well as, sort of, tell that story itself. So, the rankings are designed to highlight people, and the people, themselves, are designed to, or intended to represent stories or trends that we thought of as being editorially relevant.
ST:	So, talk to me about-, can you give me an example of a couple of the names on there and why you chose them? Like, who was number one?
PR:	Uh, sure, yeah, so I can give a brief overview of the list. So, going from ten to one, we had Jihan Wu, who is the CEO of BITMAIN. We had Amber Baldet, who is the Blockchain Lead at JP Morgan, Erik Voorhees, the CEO of a company called ShapeShift. Pieter Wuille, one of the main core developers for Bitcoin, Yao Qian, who works for the People’s Bank of China. Joe Lubin, who is the CEO of a-, one of the largest companies in the space, called ConsenSys, Naval Ravikant, a famous Silicon Valley investor. Charlie Lee, creator of LiteCoin, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan. And our, sort of, controversial number one was Bitcoin Sign Guy, who you may remember as the young fellow who photobombed Janet Yellen and, sort of, caused a stir at the Federal Reserve this year.
ST:	So, on behalf of pretty much everybody who must have ranted at you on social media in the past couple of days, why was this not Vitalik, or somebody else? Why was Bitcoin Sign Guy number one?
PR:	Well, the, “Where’s Vitalik?” movement was very strong. So, again, so, I’ll kind of walk you guys through the process for the most influential, which is that we put out a poll every year, this year we did it in October, it basically features everyone who we can think of who would be influential. And we have the community vote, we take the top vote getters, and we essentially bring them to the writers’ room, and people bring their arguments on who they feel like represents the year that was, or who they feel was the most influential. And one of the key things that we use to sort is, we ask the question, “Is this person more relevant this year, or more influential this year than they might ever be again?” So, that, obviously, helps us sort it down, right? So I think to the, sort of, “where’s Vitalik” crowd, or to the, you know, many people who were talking about Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, I think was someone who was, sort of, on the cusp there. You know, that question really helps us sort it out, when you ask the question of, you know, “Is this person, sort of, hitting, like, their potential peak as an innovator in the industry?” and I’d argue that someone like Vitalik, you know, I don’t think 2017 was, you know, the year that really is, when you look back at his history, and his career, and all that he’s done, I don’t think 2017 is going to be, you know, something that is too memorable. I mean, there might be people who debate that, but, you know, we find that, by using that criteria, it really helps us, you know, focus on that year, because there are a tonne of people who are influential in this industry all the time. I think the most important thing to remember is that it’s most influential in 2017, not most influential period, and I think there’s a huge difference there, when you’re sorting by those metrics.
ST:	No, I understand that. I guess, what I’m keen to get to is, what do you think Sign Guy represents, and some of the other people on this list represent? So, like, what are you saying by choosing them?
PR:	Yeah, true. I can unpack that a little bit. So, we felt, also, with this list that, you know, also, we were trying to narrow it down, as-, you know, when you think about somebody who’s influential, you should, sort of, be able to get an idea of that person, as maybe something that’s an extension of themselves. So, they should feel almost like a superhero, and the theme that we did with the art here was, sort of, the real-life superheroes of the industry. We almost, sort of-, I know you guys have played around with it before, but, like, the sort of Avengers type theme, or, you know, looking at how-, you know, “Who does this person represent? Are we able to describe them in a way that makes them seem larger than life? And are they larger than life people in what they represent, and how they embody those things?” So, I guess the best example of that would be the number one and two slots, so, I think there were a lot of people on  Twitter [laughter] who, you know, found it kind of polarising that number two was Jamie Dimon, obviously the CEO of a large, incumbent bank, who, you know, said a lot of things this year that weren’t super nuanced, but, I would argue, had a huge impact, in terms of, you know, galvanising support and interest on Bitcoin, so, I think I look at Jamie Dimon as someone who, you know, not just as a person he’s influential, but what was influential this year was also Wall Street and, sort of, the lumbering steps that it took towards blockchain, right? It wasn’t always sophisticated, it wasn’t always, you know, even well intentioned, or even, you know, or maybe they didn’t even come to it with really any understanding, but they still had an impact, in the way that they moved. And we felt Jamie was a good number two slot for that reason, and, you know, the number one selection was Bitcoin Sign Guy, who we felt represented who really were the people who were influential this year, which was the burgeoning retail market of investors, the everyman sort of investors, who just did a crazy thing, right? It is crazy, to a lot of people in this industry, that the markets are so high. It is crazy that, you know, where everybody came in to 2017 with predictions, the story was so vastly different than expected. Like, we came in to 2017 with an, “Oh, slow and steady wins the race, so, you know, we’ll get there eventually,” and then, you know, what we saw in 2017 was just an explosive growth, and I think it was propelled a lot by people who were willing to take bold and crazy steps, and I don’t think you’ll find someone who did something crazier than getting kicked out of a commercial hearing, for what was, essentially, a very sophomoric prank, so-,
CP:	We all had a good laugh with it. Can I ask, though, going back to your number two, Jamie Dimon. You had another person from JP Morgan in there, that I know got some interesting feedback, Amber Baldet. So, Jamie Dimon represented, kind of, the-, the institution, coming back and saying, you know, “Bitcoin’s a scam,” or whatever it is. Amber’s the one that’s actually in there doing blockchain, but also a lot of the cryptocurrency stuff in the background of JP Morgan. Why did JP Morgan find two people in the-, in the top ten?
PR:	Yeah, I think that’s a good-, I think that’s a good point. I think that we looked at it less that JP Morgan had two people in the top ten, and more that Amber was, sort of, the person who was most representative of the enterprise sector. I think we would all, sort of, agree, that it was a bit of a down year for enterprise. You know, I don’t think there was as much activity, I don’t think there were as m any proof of concepts that went live, and I don’t think there was anyone who really stood for that sector, right? If I look back at the year, Blythe Masters was really absent, R3, sort of, towards the end of the year, sort of, dissipated. You had a lot of these, you know, big players, who, again, like, you know, they’re very influential people in their own right, but I think they, sort of, lost the narrative, they lost the thread, and I think, when we looked at Amber, you know, obviously we wanted to have somebody who was representative of the enterprise crowd, and I think she’s an interesting character, because, you know, she is very open to innovation, she does seem to understand this, sort of, cypherpunk, young Millennial, sort of, ethos, that is coming up, and, in a lot of ways like Bitcoin Sign Guy, you know, she’s someone who’s here, and, sort of, innately understands where it’s going, at a deeper level, and-, or seems to. And, you know, I think the piece that Morgan Peck, who was the, you know, contributing author there, told, really, kind of, speaks to that, is that she, to us, you know, speaks to these young people who are in enterprise institutions, who are trying to make change, and, you know, because of that, I think it’s just a fascinating story, and, that she is someone who represents something that I think we’ll see more of, right? I think we’ll see more-, more Amber Baldets, because I think we’ll see more young people in their institutions who are seeking to enact change, but I think that she’s been the most visible about that, right? So, you see her in pictures, like, Ethereum parties, dressed like a unicorn, and then you see her in, like, a banking environment, and I think her elasticity, her ability to navigate those two worlds, both of which are very present, and very distant, I think speaks a lot to her as a person, and, you know, to the internet who, you know, sort of reacted to this, I-, I’m glad that they’re interacting with her. I looked at a lot of the, you know, way she was, you know, kind of, talking to those people, and I’m glad she got exposed to them, and, you know, I hope that there’s, you know, value gained from that.
ST:	So, I love the term you used for Amber, as “The Daywalker”, referencing the movie, Blade, where you have somebody that can walk in the day and the night, but has the vampire skills and the vampire strengths. I like that metaphor. And I think all of these choices are metaphors. There’s-, the Sign Guy is the metaphor for the mainstream, kind of, consumer audience coming in to this space. The, kind of, choice of Jamie Dimon as the dinosaur, as Wall Street, is, you know, really, you can unpack CME and CBOE offering futures, you can talk about, kind of, the beginnings of institutions and larger funds looking to get access to the crypto markets and ICOs, and there’s a whole bunch of things that, kind of, sit-, sit beneath that. So, as you, kind of, look in to 2018, let’s look at two things. One, where do you see that going and evolving, and two, what’s happening right now, that you think is-, is really important, and key?
PR:	Well, yeah, I think that’s a good point. So, looking in to 2018, you know, going back to Jamie Dimon, the nickname we chose for him was the dinosaur. I think-, you know, I don’t think that Wall Street is going to be dinosaurs anymore. I think they’re going to realise that they need to evolve, and I think they’re going to dip their toes in to some of these products and trends, and I think they’re going to become more savvy, right? So, I-, I expect, next year, that that, sort of, caveman, sort of, way that they have engaged with the industry will dissipate. You know, I’m not sure what the lasting impact of that will be, right? If I look at the future in terms of the markets, you know, there’s an ETF, and then, from-, where do we go from there? I mean, I think there’s still a tonne of education that needs to be done. I think we very much are in a prehistoric phase for Wall Street, at this point, right? I think that it does feel like we’re rushing towards milestones, right? It does feel like we want to see international futures, we want to see an ETF, but the question that we’re going to get to, I think, over the course of 2018, at least from the markets or the Wall Street perspective is, you know, what comes after that? So, it’s like everybody’s buying in, and we’re driving the price over these milestones, and these milestones are being hit, but, like, what happens when the Bitcoin ETF is just another ETF? And Bitcoin as a, you know, payment asset, has, you know, utility that-, you know, I think in the Erik Voorhees interview, he even talks about this, where, you know, it’s arguable that Bitcoin’s utility is less than it was a year ago, because of technical decisions that are being made. So, you know, what-, I really view 2017 a lot like I view 2013, which is, you know, it’s a sort of euphoric year, and I think, you know, if I look at, speaking about Jamie Dimon as, sort of, number two, and, like, that sort of evolution, I see, you know, that education process is going to need to begin, but with that education process, you’re going to move from this, sort of, excitement phase, to something where, you know, people are going to have questions, they’re going to have doubts, they’re going to-, they’re going to naturally become, you know, more savvy, and I think, you know, to your point about, I think earlier, you mentioned (? 47.28) markets, and that’s been a big story, and I think that’ll have an impact there. I’m not sure if that answers your question, but I guess that’s one theme that I see continuing.
CP:	So, one of the really interesting things, and hitting on that, is, Jamie Dimon, it seemed like every time he opened his mouth and said negative things about Bitcoin, the price seemed to drop and then, kind of, shoot back up. Do you think Jamie Dimon, or other heavy hitting figures, will continue to have this discourse, and, if so, do you see similar things happening? Without trying to predict the markets.
PR:	Yeah, I think it’s questionable that he had any impact on the market. I think that his influence was more that-, you know, I go back and forth about, like, what was it about Bitcoin as a fraud, right, it does seem to feel like this “let them eat cake” moment. It’s like, he, sort of, has spoke about it before, he had said a lot of things. He even dismissed Bitcoin before, but there was a certain, like, quality to that statement, that, for some reason, at that time, with Bitcoin at all-time highs, it just seemed so preposterous that it, sort of, galvanised this, sort of, movement, and I think what Dimon did this year was he got people talking about Bitcoin. They’re not saying interesting things, but they’re talking about it. They’re talking about cryptocurrency, they’re talking about blockchain, and that was enough. Right? Sometimes, doing just that was-, was the most impactful thing, but, as I think I was, sort of, suggesting, I see the narrative, kind of, in to next year, is that as they start talking about it, you know, people, when they progress through ideas and concepts and conversations, they end up, you know, becoming more informed, they end up having doubts, and they end up being more sophisticated, right? I wouldn’t-, I don’t think that there’s anyone who thinks this is a terribly sophisticated market, at this point, you know, especially when, you know, especially when looking at the cryptocurrencies, and seeing that-, you know, I mean, look at story selection, right? If I was going to write a piece on Ripple, or Stellar, and why they’re approaching all-time highs, who am I going to call? Nobody knows, right? [Laughter]. You know, the best explanation for these things are, right now, they are inexplicable, and really, almost, the perception of the thing is reality, right? There is no-, there’s no one sitting at the other end of that computer being like, “Oh, I think Stellar’s crypto economic network is a real innovation, and this is, like, how it works, and I’m super excited to make this purchase.” No. They see a market where it’s like, “Oh, this token is 25 cents, if enough people buy it, it’s going to be 75 cents, and, yeah, there are a lot of things in the market right now that are not great. But I think a part of it is, like, you know, we’re coming in to this-, you know, we just went through an introduction process with a whole new group of people, and I think that, you know, for those of us who have been sticking around and been watching every move, I think it’s important to, kind of, you know, let that process play out, or just understand that it’s going to play out. Right? That’s going to have significant impact. The, you know, arrival of unsophisticated investors is going to fuel a lot of projects, but it’s also going to bring a lot of people who need to be educated, and I think, you know, certainly at CoinDesk, it’s something we want to do, and something we’re thinking about, but I think, you know, as an industry, as a whole, I think that will be a big storyline for next year. Because, if you look at 2013, what happened? You know, a bunch of people got educated, and then they lost all their money in Mt. Gox [laughter] right? And that-, and that took years to unwind. So, here, we have another opportunity, people are educated and excited, but, you know, I still think, you know, in the back of my mind, as someone who’s been watching the industry for a while, I still am always looking at events and being like, “Okay, what’s going to fall?” right? “What’s the thing that’s going to break this time?” Because, you know, and I think there are people who have said this publicly, I think a little bit better than I can, and it’s that, you know, the value of Bitcoin is up 20x, but is the sophistication of Coinbase’s infrastructure up 20x? Like, no. There’s a lag there, right? And I think if you look at that as a proxy for the entire industry, you know, I think the big story for 2018 will be can the market maintain-, I always say, you know, speaking about cryptocurrencies, like, can the market maintain what it has right now? Can it-, can it do what it tried to do in 2013, and just sustain? You know, I think-, I think a sustainable, sideways year would be a momentous achievement [laughter].
ST:	Wow [laughter]. It’s a pretty compelling way of looking at it. The price is up 20x, but is the infrastructure up 20x? And we-, just harking back to talking about people like Amber Baldet being daywalkers, I often talk about this show, Blockchain Insider, being the Venn diagram between, kind of, the DLT space and trying to evolve financial services, and the cryptocurrency space, as being, like, this-, this whole new start. So, it’s like the Prius and the Tesla. There’s starting again, and there’s-, there’s the, like, evolution of, and actually, the answer’s probably somewhere in the middle, for the mainstream, in, like, five years’ time, but how do you get those people that can converge the best ideas from both? Because the old world of financial services, they’ve got some practices that evolved, and some that no longer make sense, and are no longer relevant, and some that just evolved, because it was good practice, because society is ultimately going to want those things. What can you learn from that, and who is ideally positioned, inside those organisations and outside those organisations, to deliver those messages and convince the right people that those are the right things to do? And in turn-, and, on the flipside, who are those people in the cryptocurrency communities doing that? And I see a lot of good initiatives on-, on both sides. So, do you see that evolving? Or do you see it, kind of, pulling in one direction or the other?
PR:	I guess I’m split on that. I have-, you know, so I guess in doing another one of our yearend initiatives, The Year in Review, we, sort of, ask, you know, people who are interesting in the industry to contribute opinion pieces, and one of the things I was looking for, for a long time, was someone to, kind of, write something about whether or not the enterprise DLT market would have a resurgent year in 2018. And I couldn’t find that many people [laughter], I actually only found one person who was willing to write that, or who thought that that was a thing. Um, you know, I think it’s interesting. I still don’t know-, I think this gets to the question about whether or not the cryptocurrencies and the blockchains are, sort of, something that is directly competitive with financial services. It sort of gets in to the existential questions about, not only that, but, you know, whether or not this market can kind of just evolve in to something that is organically different. You know, I was thinking about this when I was thinking about governance the other day. We hear the word governance on blockchains, and we assume the governance we know, we don’t assume the governance we don’t know, right? So, governance, to us, is people sitting in a town hall, it’s not recognising that the internet has spaces that act like town halls, and that this is, maybe, just a structure that works better for that. So, I guess to-, suffice to say, I guess I would answer your question, I think that, you know, I think that-, I am hopeful about the enterprise, and that financial services companies continue to find value in it and experiment. I think they’ve provided a lot of interest, and they’ve certainly galvanised a lot of people like Amber, and other young people in those institutions, to explore something new, I just question whether or not the-, you know, the, sort of, applying the old to the new, kind of thing, I-, maybe that seems to be what they’re running out of steam on here. You know, it does seem to me like there’s a bit of a lull. Part of me believes that maybe some time in 2018, R3 will be turning out an 80-bank network for various financial services things every day, and, like, part of me does expect to see that resurgence, once they, you know, wake up to these technologies, but then, you know, I guess on the same hand, I guess, you know, I-, sometimes, I kind of go with this online/offline commerce thing, where it’s like, you know, at what point did these companies care? And if you look at offline/online commerce, it’s-, maybe you knew that feature was coming in 1990, but it didn’t really matter to you until the 2000s, right? There was so many things that needed to happen. So, you know, I guess my statement on that would be, I don’t think that clash is coming for a while. If there is, sort of, a crossover moment between the online/offline commerce, DLT cryptocurrency worlds, I don’t think it will be for a while. I think-, I more expect them to continue to find value in their own ways in the technology for a long enough time.
ST:	Interesting perspective. They will continue down their own path, and they both pay their masters, in their own way. So, the enterprise world gets value out of what they’re trying to do, and they feel good about it, and the cryptocurrency world gets value. Where I see this is interesting might be when institutional investors are trying to get access, with large-, with wide pools of liquidity, in to crypto assets. How do they actually do that, when you’re a pension fund, a hedge fund, at scale? Because it’s difficult to go get an account at Coinbase for that, right? So, to the infrastructure point, so, will there be new infrastructure players, or will the old infrastructure players evolve? So, interesting things to play with, and definitely, I think, Pete, you and I, and Colin, could go forever on these subjects, so, we’re up against it on time, so I’m going to have to end it here. So, for the folks that are listening, where can people find out more about you, and, of course-, and, of course, CoinDesk?
PR:	Yeah, so, obviously, CoinDesk.com, publishing news daily on everything blockchain and cryptocurrency. You can also find me on Twitter @Pete_Rizzo_ that’s where I’m most active, and yeah, we’d love to have people, new people engaged with CoinDesk, and, yeah, thanks for having me.
ST:	Thank you for being with us, Pete.
[Break]
ST:	A big thank you to Pete, and, of course, my regular co-host, G-Sass himself, Colin G Platt, as well as the amazing production team here at 11FS, Laura Watkins, our producer, and Michael Bailey, our Editor, and Assistant Producer, Matt Snell. Thank you for listening. If you like what you heard, please, please, please subscribe to our podcast, and leave us a review on iTunes. Those reviews help us so, so much. Please spread the word, tell your friends and colleagues to listen, too. We’ll have more Blockchain Insider next week. Goodbye.
End of Audio