Did you hear about that $69 million NFT sale on Christie’s? Well, we just dove right into NFTs! NFTs or non-fungible tokens are unique digital items that are not interchangeable. We are beginning to see the rise and value of NFTs take off, mostly in the creative industries, where we see digital art, music and other creative work being bought and sold as NFTs. In this episode we explore the state of play of the NFT world and how they have taken the world by storm this past year. Our guest, Ryan goes on to discuss the origins and beginnings of NFTs and the creative industries, namely creators and artists in Hollywood, his former hometown.

We continue discussing the potential and opportunity NFTs hold for creators that have been traditionally left out of the spotlight and off the stage. Ryan describes how new and young creators can take work into their own hands and start making a living for themselves without necessarily needing to answer to the current “gatekeepers” of the creative industry.

Ryan shares the work they are doing at Crucible and his vision for the platform and how it will contribute to a larger paradigm shift of what he calls an Open Metaverse. We also touch on the future of NFTs and how the world will look in a decade’s time because of this new technology.

We want to give a special shoutout to our sponsor Blockfinex.

Special Guests: Ryan Gill

Special Guest: Ryan Gill.

We had two great guests on the show: Gabriel Abed from Bitt.com and Aruba Khalid from the Dubai Future Foundation. In this episode, we discussed:

• Why programmable money is important (04:17)
• What is programmable money (06:32)
• Money for the authorities: Is there an argument for separating political decisions from economic outcomes (09:47)
• How Bitt.com have helped central banks to create central bank digital currency (11:47)
• Advantages of central bank digital currencies (16:42)
• Are banks needed if central banks create their own central bank digital currencies? (18:00)
• Money for the corporations: Libra and how money is based on its usefulness (19:18)
• Can we program money that is useful and is private? (22:22)
• The roles of regulators when regulating Money for the corporations (25:17)
• The advent of corporation based money (29:45)
• Now it all depends on who you trust (32:02)
• Money for the people: Cryptocurrencies have forced the conversation (35:29)
• Bitcoin is designed to protect the 99% (36:22)
• Bitcoin prices and fluctuations (39:17)

This was another amazing live panel we hosted as we discussed the real problems and questions surrounding programmable money and what sound money looks like.

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word and hitting that subscribe button!

Special Guests: Aruba Khalid and Gabriel Abed.

Ahmed dives into Gavin’s value system and tries to understand why he is pursuing the path he is currently on. Driven by curiosity, we learn that he helped to code the ideas that Vitalik drew up for Ethereum and is increasingly curious about what else he can create next!

Ahmed, curious about Gavin’s experiences, wants to find out the challenges he faced in the past 6 years as a prolific tech leader in the field and most importantly how he discerned the cynical from the authentic.

We also get some interesting opinions on a few topics:

• Bitcoin vs Ethereum? Gavin gives us his views on which one he’d pick if bitcoin and ethereum were hanging off a cliff!
• If blockchain was deployed in a country, which country would you deploy it in? Gavin thinks superpowers!

On one of the last things advocated by Gavin is a push for reducing the need for trust in the world; less trust, more truth.

Music Credit: LAKEY INSPIRED

Track Name: Warm Nights

Music By: LAKEY INSPIRED @ https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired

Original upload HERE – https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired/warm-nights

Special Guest: Dr. Gavin Wood.

Sponsored By:

• CBX : CBX is a digital asset trading platform dedicated to providing users with safe and professional digital currency trading services. The company has independent operating teams in UAE, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and the London, other countries and regions.

In this episode, Ahmed and the special co-host for this episode, Dr. Marwan, catch up with Samson Mow who is the CSO at Blockstream, a bitcoin infrastructure company.

Having spent two years in China working for BTCC, Samson reminisces over his time in Shanghai and goes over what it's like working in a Chinese exchange in a relatively early period in the industry. We then move on to talk about Blockstream, and how they are building out bitcoin infrastructure.

Blockstream is known for its product Blockstream Satellite (what the hell does this have to do with bitcoin?!). No, it's not a bitcoin node that they launched into space, but rather a satellite that is in space to allow more access to bitcoin where the network broadcasts the bitcoin blockchain around the world 24/7 for free. This means less dependency on internet access to broadcast transactions and according to Samson, adds extra resilience to the bitcoin network through network stability and cost savings.
Samson explains the methodology and rationale behind why they launched a satellite and how it works. Dr. Marwan follows up on extra technicalities on the Satellite and if there are applicable applications to third world countries.

Samson then goes on to talk about the Lightning network, what it is and also applications of it in third world countries. The discussion slowly diverts to bitcoin as a digital asset and what form it would take once the lightning network becomes mainstream. If bitcoin is digital gold now, would bitcoin become a medium of exchange when the lightning network goes live? Samson takes an interesting approach saying that bitcoin is everything and has multiple use cases.

Since Samson’s background is in gaming, Ahmed picks his brains on how blockchain can be applicable to gaming and to declutter the hype from reality on what's possible and not.

All this and more is discussed in this week's episode of Encrypted!

Also, the legal bits for the soundtrack used in the podcast:
Music Credit: LAKEY INSPIRED

Track Name: Warm Nights

Music By: LAKEY INSPIRED @ https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired

Original upload HERE – https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired/warm-nights

License for commercial use: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported “Share Alike” (CC BY-SA 3.0) License.

Full License HERE – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Special Guests: Dr. Marwan Alzarouni and Samson Mow.

If you are new to the space, they will help you to unwrap what bitcoin actually is by discussing the following:
• Why bitcoin exists and how it emerged
• 2 analogies to help you understand how bitcoin works
• Clearing misconceptions – Is bitcoin only used by criminals? Does bitcoin = blockchain? How many times has bitcoin been hacked?!!
• Breaking down private and public keys and wallets

They also discuss the incidents, both good and bad, in bitcoin’s 10-year history, including:
Crypto adoption rapidly increasing as blockiain.info, a free wallet provider, announces 25 million downloads of its wallet.
Bitcoin is legal in over 106 countries and legal tender in Japan, meaning people can use bitcoin as a currency to purchase goods.
The challenge of scaling bitcoin and how the community has responded so far. They will also be talking about the bitcoin fork which resulted in bitcoin cash’s existence and the implications of this.

All of the above and more will be on this week’s episode of Encrypted!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on iTunes and the other podcast platforms. And if you found it helpful or know someone who will, spread the knowledge and tell them to tune in!

Sources:
Blockchain.info hits 25 million crypto wallets

Bitcoin legality

Still Don't Get Bitcoin? Here's an Explanation Even a Five-Year-Old Will Understand