To the Moon and Back With Polychain's Olaf Carlson-Wee - Ep.074

How Polychain is faring during the crypto winter, where we are in the tech cycle, whether he thinks Ethereum 2.0 will deliver and how he views the competition in the smart contract space. We discuss the upcoming Facebook coin, what that might look like, and how his portfolio projects could compete against a token issued by a large company. We cover how regulatory uncertainty is affecting the development of crypto projects, what he thinks of the fact that some trends in the DeFi movement seem to mimic the risks leading up to the financial contract, why he's so excited about MakerDAO, what he makes of its difficulties keeping its USD peg, and why Tether hasn't lost its dollar peg despite being only 74% backed. Plus, we talked about how decentralized autonomous corporations could someday come into being, and what he thinks of on-chain governance systems today. Join us at the Oslo Freedom Forum! On May 27th I will be hosting a conversation about the future of finance and human rights at the Oslo Freedom Forum in Norway. As the world continues to move toward a cashless society, paper currency is disappearing. Companies like Facebook, Apple, and TenCent are becoming increasingly influential in the digital payment space. We'll discuss how individuals and companies can preserve and protect financial freedoms in the digital age. I'll be joined by Bitcoin author and educator Jimmy Song; Casa chief technology officer Alena Vranova; and CoinCenter founder Jerry Brito. To register to attend, you can visit oslofreedomforum.com today -- use a discount code “unconfirmed25” to get 25% off your ticket price! Join us at Omega Institute in New York in September! Sign up for our crypto weekend retreat today! https://www.eomega.org/workshops/virtues-of-the-crypto-revolution Thank you to our sponsor! CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links: Watch the full video on CoinDesk ("To the Moon and Back" under Main Stage): https://www.coindesk.com/events/consensus-2019/videos Polychain: https://polychain.capital WSJ article on Olaf: https://www.wsj.com/articles/olaf-carlson-wee-rode-the-bitcoin-boom-to-silicon-valley-riches-can-he-survive-the-crash-1536681364 WSJ on Polychain's assets dropping: https://www.wsj.com/articles/crypto-fund-polychains-assets-drop-40-from-1-billion-mark-11554843471?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=3 Facebook coin: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/technology/cryptocurrency-facebook-telegram.html?searchResultPosition=9 Tether only 74% backed: https://www.coindesk.com/tether-lawyer-confirms-stablecoin-74-percent-backed-by-cash-and-equivalents MakerDAO stability fee at 20%: https://www.coindesk.com/dai-stablecoins-stability-fee-nears-20-after-latest-makerdao-vote Aragon vote being swung at the last moment: https://www.evanvanness.com/post/184616403861/aragon-vote-shows-the-perils-of-onchain-governance