ARK Crypto Brainstorm #01: The Aftermath of FTX

We are pleased to introduce the ARK Crypto Brainstorm; a quarterly conversation between a rotating group of experts in the crypto space, The ARK Crypto Brainstorm will be published through the For Your Innovation podcast channels and aims to be an informative and in-depth conversation on the current state of the ever-changing crypto landscape with experts offering diverse viewpoints.

In the first episode of the ARK Crypto Brainstorm, ARK Cryptocurrency Analyst Yassine Elmandjra and Chief Futurist Brett Winton hosted five leaders in the crypto space including:

Alex Gladstein CSO, Human Rights Foundation Alex Gladstein is Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. He has also served as Vice President of Strategy for the Oslo Freedom Forum since its inception in 2009. In his work, Alex has connected hundreds of dissidents and civil society groups with business leaders, technologists, journalists, philanthropists, policymakers, and artists to promote free and open societies.

Chris Burniske Partner, Placeholder Chris Burniske is the Partner at Placeholder VC, a venture capital firm that invests in decentralized networks and web3 services. Chris is also the author of Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond, and he formerly led Crypto research at ARK.

Dhruv Bansal Co-Founder and CSO, Unchained Capital Dhruv Bansal is the Co-Founder and CSO at Unchained Capital, a bitcoin native financial services company offering collaborative custody multisignature vaults and loans for bitcoin holders. Prior to Unchained Capital, Dhruv was the co-Founder and CSO at Infochimps, a cloud service that streamlines building and managing complex big data environments and distills analytics.

Eric Wall Crypto Blogger Eric Wall is a Stockholm-based software engineer and cryptocurrency trader. He works at a financial IT infrastructure provider as a blockchain and cryptocurrency domain expert and holds a M.Sc.Eng. in Information and Communication Engineering Technologies from the Faculty of Engineering (LTH), Lund University, where he specialized in blockchain technology.

Nic Carter Founding Partner, Castle Island Ventures Nic Carter is a founding partner at Castle Island Ventures, a venture capital firm focused exclusively on public blockchains. Before founding Castle Island, Nic worked for Fidelity as their first cryptoasset analyst, where he devised research perspectives on public blockchains. He is the cofounder of Coin Metrics. He holds a degree in philosophy from the University of St Andrews and an MSc Finance and Investment from the University of Edinburgh.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Potential sources for additional fallout in the cryptocurrency market
• Why might Binance’s auditor have quit
• Binance’s current situation generally, and what might the company’s future look like
• Game theory on calling out crypto scams
• What the future could be for Tether
• How US Treasury assets could be instrumentalized
• Would a potential collapse of Tether be positive for Bitcoin?
• How crypto regulation plays a role in the long-term
• How Fidelity can impact Bitcoin
• What the future might hold for the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry
• Bitcoin’s relative strength among a variety of other crypto crashes
• The prospects for Bitcoin’s price movement in the near term
• General thoughts on the collapse of FTX
• Is Solana dead or can it come back into favor?
• How the NFT ecosystem compares to the rest of the Ethereum ecosystem
• What are some optimistic viewpoints in crypto despite considerable recent volatility
• How government policy and regulation could shape the crypto market